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I'm all for a peacefully-aggressive expansionist American foreign policy. We should be offering any small, culturally compatible, developed nation an opportunity to join the USA voluntarily with a path to full statehood. Potential targets:
Singapore. English speaking, small, rich, educated, strategically located, with a basically compatible common-law system of government. Singapore has limited natural sovereignty, and so would face relatively little difficulty in adapting to statehood. Would add massively to America's human capital and geographic reach. Would be the natural ambassadors of America to the rest of Asia, while the backing of the USA would permanently secure Singapore's future from covetous neighbors or population decline. A beautiful, genuinely diverse, and intelligent people, a credit to the Nation. Could ultimately foster further expansion into ASEAN countries, Malaysia is already most of the way there with the flag and over 60% of Malaysians are fluent in English.
Cuba. Small, relatively developed, produces disproportionate numbers of doctors and engineers relative to its size. Don't just raise the embargo, eliminate the border, correct the mistakes we made after the Spanish American war and make Cuba a state. Alongside Puerto Rico, and splitting the smaller island territories between them, Cuba would foster further filibustering into Latin America. Cubans are historically a brilliant people, with outsize contributions to arts, music, heroic politics, and science. Cuba developed its own damn Covid vaccine, think what they could do with Capitalism and Capital from the rest of the USA.
Greenland. One of Trump's better ideas. Allows us to surround Canada, a prelude to the inevitable CanadAnschluss. Honestly I have no opinion on Greenlanders, but there aren't that many of them anyway.
Ireland. The ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties are obvious, the most powerful Irishmen in history have all been American Presidents. Ireland's economy is already based on Americna corporations, why not formalize things? Becomes the entrepot to the EU for the USA (how statehood and EU membership and Northern Ireland border issues would be handled are obviously issues, but wouldn't be any more complicated than the British saga in the EU). A lovely people (on the inside) who have plenty to offer the USA in culture and humor.
That would be a good start.
One reasonable method of assessing the overall size of the USA's states may be to take the natural logarithm of (population × land area ÷ km2). Under that metric, the currently-incorporated states contain e27 ± 1.7 people⋅km2, ranging from eμ − 2.99σ (Rhode Island) to eμ + 2.2σ (Texas).
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Hah, I've never heard this take before, but it's hilariously fascinating. We are a nation of states after all... why not just drop the pretence and build an empire for real?
The answer is in the question- the "nation of states" isn't used to putting up a united front about anything but the basics (outside of maybe what that year's progressives are busy being angry about, whose power waxes and wanes with time), so that empire tends to be relatively minimalistic.
The only reason to impose empire, at the ground level, is to make a statement to the world that a.) your social policies are obviously bullshit (if they were true the other country would already have adopted them), and b.) you're more interested in enforcing them than you are with what your vassal can do for you resource/economy-wise. All the imported goods get a lot more expensive once a country sends its goons to force those populations to abandon all their old gods and bow down before LGBTesus; you get way more revolts that way (Afghanistan being the most recent) and it's a great way to unify and otherwise motivate your enemies.
Better to just leave them to their own devices and try to impose bits and pieces when you can through things like the Imperial Monetary Fund; this is especially important should you have a nation who sees things the same way (and the Chinese are offering much better terms than the Soviets ever could, International Communism has a higher interest rate than Belt and Road).
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Ooh, or Flanders - my brother tells me they ~all speak fluent English
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