An Australian guide to the new flat Earth

As Donald Trump redraws the world from ice cap to ice cap, Australia risks discovering that being strategically central on someone else’s map means being politically expendable all on its own, writes Vince Hooper.

THEN Americans finished arguing about walls, tariffs, and indictments, President Donald Trump apparently he looked at a globe and decided it was inefficient. Why stop at the borders when you can collect axes?

Thus emerges the latest cartographic innovation of Trump 2.0: a world rearranged not from left to right but from top to bottom – from the Arctic to the Antarctic – like a kebab spit slowly turning on the charcoal grill of international law.

This should sound familiar to Australians. We live on the underside of the planet, perpetually upside down in American political metaphors, and generally only remembered when Washington needs a loyal friend with submarines, sand, and a Constitution that doesn’t get in our way.

But now we find ourselves faced with a grand new vision: a vertical empire stretching from Pole to Pole, polar ice cap to polar ice cap, with the rest of the world reduced to inconvenient continents floating aside.

It looks like Trump has finally found a map he likes.

Great vertical rotation

The genius of the Pole to Pole doctrine is its simplicity. Horizontal geopolitics (alliances, multilateralism, diplomacy) is complex. Vertical geopolitics is clean. You choose your top. You choose gold. You draw a straight line to whatever is in between and call it destiny.

Greenland? Hat obviously. Antarctica? Boots. Everything else is just the body.

Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland was once dismissed as a far-fetched real estate joke. But jokes, like tariffs, can become policy if repeated loudly enough.

Control the Arctic, dominate shipping lanes, access mines, and most importantly, stick it to China. Control Antarctica and you future-proof yourself against climate change, science, and penguins with questionable accents.

This is the geopolitics of the Sharpie age.

Australia: Belt buckle of empire

Where does this leave Australia? Right in the middle is the belt buckle of the vertical world order. Not so powerful that it becomes a pole, not so insignificant as to be ignored. Strategically indispensable, politically disposable.

In Washington’s new imagination, Australia is no longer a country but a convenient stopping point: a refueling station among the glaciers, a friendly place to park submarines, drones and the occasional visiting senator who can’t find Darwin on a map but is absolutely sure it’s vital.

AUKUSOnce sold to Australians as a sober deterrent, it now looks suspiciously like a loyalty program. If you collect enough points, you can have nuclear submarines by the 2040s; assuming the empire still runs on water and not vibrations.

Our leaders nodded enthusiastically. After all, it’s hard to say no when the person asking the question has nuclear codes and a reality TV background.

The Pacific is shifting sideways

While Canberra looks respectfully south to Antarctica and dutifully north to Washington, something strange is happening to Australia’s east: the Pacific is receding.

Australia’s traditional backyard is being courted, financed and occasionally defended, island by island, by powers that have no need for submarines or arctic metaphors. Pacific leaders talk climate survival; Australia comes with strategic frames and photo opportunities.

The irony is cruel. As Trump redraws the world vertically, Australia is losing it horizontally; He’s too busy positioning himself between the poles to notice that the neighborhoods around him are changing.

While we protect Antarctica with one hand, the Solomons are silently slipping away from us with the other.

Climate change: Melting the bounty

Of course, the polar obsession has a small practical problem: the poles are melting.

The race to dominate the glaciers emerges as the ice gently retreats. Trump, historically a climate change skeptic, now finds himself oddly invested in frozen real estate. Meanwhile, Australia finances Antarctic science with one hand and exports the coal that melts Antarctica with the other.

This is a remarkable diplomatic trick; claiming stewardship over the ice while accelerating its disappearance.

This is a strategy rather than a liquidation sale.

Sovereignty, but make it vertical

The Pole to Pole worldview is based on sovereignty, international law or Antarctic Treaty. These are from the old, flat world; hectic, multilateral, consensual.

The new world is cylindrical.

Treaties are no longer binding agreements; these are decorative PDFs. Alliances are based not on shared values but on annually renewable subscriptions based on tone, gratitude and intensity of applause.

Australia, a nation built on legalism and process, now finds itself enforcing a rules-based order on behalf of a boss who is quietly tearing up the rule book. We remain deputy sheriffs long after the sheriff decides law enforcement is bad for ratings.

Trump the brand, not the strategist

This isn’t some grand strategy, it’s branding.

It fits neatly into a Pole to Pole rally banner. We can easily imagine Trump pointing at a map and saying: “We own the top. We own the bottom. No one has ever owned this much bottom before.”

Australian diplomats are then tasked with deciphering whether this is metaphor, impulse or policy, treating all three as actionable intelligence.

We applaud politely, take notes, and hope the map doesn’t change again before the next press conference.

Antarctica: Until it’s peaceful

Australians like to imagine Antarctica as a triumph of peaceful cooperation; Science against sovereignty, penguins against power. This fiction survives only as long as the great powers see fit.

As Antarctica becomes strategic rather than symbolic, research stations begin to resemble forward operating bases with better branding. Cooperation turns into competition. Science acquires flags.

Legally committed to keeping Antarctica peaceful, Australia will soon face a question it has avoided for years: How peaceful are we prepared to be when our allies stop pretending?

silence at home

Perhaps the most striking feature of this whole shift is not Trump’s ambition, but Australia’s silence.

There is no serious national debate. No public accounts. Just a bipartisan nod and a deliberate refusal to ask what compliance would cost right now.

Australia sleepwalks through an argument over supermarket prices, only to discover it has chosen a side when the bill arrives.

From falling off the map to being pinned on the map

Australians have always joked about falling off the edge of the world. According to Trump’s new geometry, the danger is not falling; to be fixed in place, to be fixed between poles not of our choosing, to be turned by forces that do not consult us.

From Pole to Pole you can sound brave, determined, and even playful. But empires built with rulers and egos rarely end well for those below the line.

And if history teaches us anything, it’s this: When great powers start redrawing maps for fun, the middle often gets crushed, the penguins silently taking note.

An independent Australia need not choose a pole. He needs to remember where he stands.

Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline at the SP Jain School of Global Management, which has campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

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