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Free and Open Spaces: How Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Global Leaders are Rewiring Geopolitics

Elon Musk interviewed by Chris Anderson at TED2017 - The Future You, April 24-28, 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED
Elon Musk interviewed by Chris Anderson at TED2017 - The Future You, April 24-28, 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED

When Elon Musk looks back at Earth on his travels to Mars, the big blue beachball may look the same, but here is to bet the future geopolitics of homeland Earth will be different. Expect this new world map to come not from the puffing chests of great power politics but rewired more by mundane paths of trade and commerce, the free and open spaces that connect the planet together. In part, this change will be stewarded by entrepreneurial visionaries like space captain Musk but also earthbound global leaders like his pals Trump (US), Meloni (Italy), Melei (Argentina), and Modi (India).

A New Old

It would be a bad bet to believe that the US, as well as friends and allies, will stop skirmishing with the likes of China, Russia, and Iran anytime soon (unless the three collapse from the internal rot plaguing each adversary in its own way). That said, the great power struggle doesn’t answer the question of what the rest of the world does while the great powers are struggling. 

For sure, the odds of the planet splitting into a complex sphere of influence, despite the dire predictions of pearl-clutching strategic pundits, dim every day. Like the polar bear plunge, America and its enemies might plummet into another Cold War. Still, they don’t have the power and influence to divide the world among themselves into private playgrounds—no East and West, no neutral zones or Global Souths distinguished from Global Norths, no poles with nations circling great powers like little planets. 

Rather, the old geography, the traditional paths that linked Eurasia together and link Eurasia to the rest of the world, are going to reemerge. Neither Beijing nor Moscow nor even Washington, certainly not Tehran, have the power to stop them from growing back like mowed grass. 

Trump and his clique have already figured out the times they are a-changing. Instead of fighting the new old geography, they are instead, like Musk’s incessant posting on X, nudging the world along—because in the end, they too benefit from not lapsing into the brutal old practices of imperialism or isolationism trying to prevent or insulate themselves from the changes of a changing world.

Three big geopolitical projects will tie the world together. They are not a form of globalization, which was just another practice of imperialism, a Davos political project to unite the world under a progressive vision that, in the end, was not delivering the promised progress and prosperity or, for that matter, a rules-based order with any rules that anyone was really following. Nor are these new geopolitical projects a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, another version of old imperialist practice (more old wine in new bottles with Mandarin labels). Instead, Trump et al. are backing something truly new and let timelessly old projects that are the opposite of globalization and the Belt and Road ploys. They are going with the flow.

Free and Open Indo-Pacific

The first of these big ideas was a free and open Indo-Pacific, a proposal birthed by one of Trump’s pals, the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. While the free and open Indo-Pacific was, while not stated, a project to counter China, the strategy was not to offer an alternative cage to Beijing’s domination of the world encompassing the Pacific and Indian Ocean but a more modest strategy to block the CCP from being the master of the Asian neighborhood. 

The plan for a free and open Indo-Pacific was not just aspirational. The concept included leadership to spur operationalizing the vision—the Quad. This framework included Japan, the US, India, and Australia, each with its own interests but united by one common bond: the belief that they were all better off with the region being free and open. The idea took off when Trump’s buddy, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, joined the team.

The Quad has become an enduring institution in the emerging new old world. Biden kept it going despite the fact the alliance was a Trump-initiated project. Meanwhile, the first foreign policy act in the new Trump administration was a meeting of the Quad foreign minister chaired by the first-day-on-the-job US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Further, the Quad has evolved into a Quad-Plus club, with countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, New Zealand, and South Korea more closely aligning with the idea.

Free and Open Indo-Mediterranean

This second space was the brainchild of another part of the Trump-Musk posse, Georgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, whose outreach to Modi’s India became an initiative to extend free and open spaces from the Indian Ocean through the Middle East and East and North Africa to Europe. This opening birthed projects, including the IMEC (India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor), the proposal to massively expand the throughput across the Middle East beyond the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe.  

Italy sits at the nexus of three geopolitical corridors that had united Eurasia for centuries and are reemerging. One is the trade and commerce through the Middle East. Projects like IMEC. The second corridor is the old Silk Road, often called the Middle Corridor, connecting the Central Asia States and the Caucuses of Europe across the Black Sea. The third connects North, Central, and Southern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Aegean and the Black Seas. Once the pathway for Viking traders, today, the effort to connect the backbone of Europe is championed by the Three Seas Initiative

The Indo-Mediterranean conceptually expands the campaign for free and open spaces from the Panama Canal to the West Coast of North and South America, across the Pacific Islands to all of Europe, the Greater Middle East, and East Africa. A free and open Indo-Mediterranean is not just an idea made in Rome. The vision fits well with Modi’s Look East policy, efforts to be a leader in the Global South, and India’s quest to be a major trading partner in Europe. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also want to increase their engagement in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. For his part, Trump loved the Three Seas Initiative last time he was president. He is also the author of the Abraham Accords, which fits like a hand-in-glove with IMEC. Further, the U.S. is a proponent of the Middle Corridor. Secretary Rubio, for example, mentioned during his confirmation hearings the importance of America having a strategy for Central Asia. 

Free and Open Atlantic

Completing the free and open pathways across the blue dot is the vision for a free and open Atlantic Community. Little known is that in the closing days of Trump’s first presidency, his team at the National Security Council worked on an Atlantic Strategy to combat malicious Chinese actions in the Atlantic region, a space that the US had not seen a serious adversarial threat since the last German U-boats plied the Atlantic. The Atlantic Strategy included an integrated, partnered approach to protecting free and open spaces from the High North to the transatlantic community and the littoral space in Africa and South America.

There is evidence Trump is picking up where he left off with his salvo of comments on Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. Greenland is a strategically vital waypoint in the transatlantic bridge. Greenland has been essential to the US presence in the Atlantic since World War I. That has never changed. Trump has raised the profile of the island now out of concern of encroachment by China. This is equally true of the Panama Canal, the strategic link between the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific worlds. Canada, along with Iceland and the Nordic and Baltic countries, is America’s indispensable partner in ensuring a Free North. The “new” Monroe Doctrine is aimed at targeting Chinese, as well as Russian and Iranian influence, not to make the Atlantic an American lake but to keep this part of the world free and open—and safe.

The Atlantic world extends to Latin America. No leader grasps this better than Argentina’s Javier Milei, who hangs out with Trump and Meloni not just because they are the cool kids but because they are leaders who share the belief that security, prosperity, and freedom can be secured by partnerships building free and open spaces.

West Africa is also an important part of this community. The Africa-Atlantic pipeline project, for example, which will connect the economies of West and Central Africa to Europe, is an example of the expanding web of connectivity spreading over the Atlantic world.

The Musk Factor

Musk fits in with the free and open tribal leaders much like Pope John Paul, who is paired with Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher as the transformational leaders of the Cold War world. Musk, like John Paul, adds an ethical dimension. Musk is a great humanist. Sure, he is a successful science and business leader. Starlink, for example, is one of the technological fuels driving the rapid implementation of spaces, delivering capability without even having physical infrastructure on the ground.

Elon Musk enters Twitter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Elon Musk enters Twitter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

In addition, Musk provides an explanation of why all this matters to the human race. Whether reaching for Mars or reaching across free and open spaces, he is championing leadership that delivers more opportunity for human flourishing, for people to deservedly benefit from the fruits of their liberty and the promise of security in their person and freedom of expression from present and future imperialists and globalists.

Braver New World

Unlike the deceitful promises of globalism and the Belt and Road, free and open spaces are not advertising and can’t deliver a new rules-based order, let alone a Utopia free from war and want or tariffs.

On the other hand, free and open spaces can allow free sovereign nations more space to make their own choices. The ones that choose good governance in service of their people will, without question, profit most. 

About the Author: Dr. James Jay Carafano 

Dr. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy affairs. Carafano previously served as the Vice President of Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and served in the US Army for 25 years.  He is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as a prolific writer and researcher. Follow him on X: @JJCarafano

Written By

A 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, James Jay Carafano is Senior Counselor to the President and E.W. Richardson Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. A leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, Carafano previously served as the Vice President of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. Carafano is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as a prolific writer and researcher. His most recent publication is “Brutal War” (Lynne Reinner, 2021), a study of combat in the Southwest Pacific. He also authored “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World” (Texas A&M University Press, 2012), a survey of the revolutionary impact of the Internet age on national security. He was selected from thousands to speak on cyber warfare at the 2014 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas, the nation’s premier tech and social media conference.

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