One of the odder initiatives of Donald Trump’s second term has been his fixation on the idea of annexing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. “We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” he said in a speech before Congress in March. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” Later that month, Vice President JD Vance traveled to the island and accused Denmark of mismanagement: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” he said, though he also claimed that America would not send in troops — at least not for now.

Then in May, Trump threatened to seize Greenland by force. “Something could happen with Greenland, I’ll be honest,” he said on Meet the Press.

The reason for this obsession is anybody’s guess. After all, Greenland is already a NATO ally, and the US military already has a large base in its far north. My personal theory is that he has been looking at Mercator projection maps, which exaggerate the size of Greenland by about a factor of fourteen (it looks roughly the size of Africa, when it’s actually smaller than Argentina) and thinking it would be nice to paint all that ice red, white, and blue. Wars of aggression are, after all, a typical characteristic of fascists.