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11:19 08.09.2026 •
In late August, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes straddling the border between the US and Canada. The new name has already been added to the US National Geographic Names Database (GNIS). However, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming insisting that the lake's historical name stay unchanged.
The US President signed the renaming order as part of his escalating trade war with Ottawa. Canada has dug its heels and has so far been responding in kind. Due to the large volumes of mutual trade, this standoff is bad for both countries. President Trump is apparently trying to exert some pressure on his northern neighbor. Commentators believe that after setbacks in Greenland, Cuba, and Iran, he hopes to achieve at least a symbolic foreign policy victory against Ottawa - even if it is a dispute over a geographic name.
The use of expansionist rhetoric has already become a kind of a Trump trademark. Last year, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the "American Gulf," and expressed a wish to make Canada the 51st US state. Earlier this year, Trump reiterated his intention to establish US control over Greenland in a bid to build up Washington’s capabilities in the Arctic. This past summer, he floated the idea to rename the Strait of Hormuz after himself. Now, after signing an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario, Trump jokingly told reporters that he was thinking about renaming the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
Even though the expansionist subtext of Trump's geographic rhetoric is obvious, observers still wonder whether he is just bluffing, testing the world community's reaction, or is dead serious. Is Trump prepared to go beyond linguistics and start using toponymy as a political tool? The motives behind his actions remain both provocative and murky as the issue of geographic names is missing from the National Security Strategy, released by the White House in late 2025. Moreover, it makes no mention of most of the territories and regions that have become household names as a result of Trump's toponymic exercises.
Donald Trump's inaugural address, delivered on January 20, 2025, was brimming with grand promises and ambitious initiatives to “Make America Great Again.” Trump describes his approach to foreign policy as a "common sense revolution." This presents a conservative revision of the ideas that prevailed after the end of World War II and, according to Trump and his supporters, caused a crisis in US foreign policy. Just how feasible these promises are remains a big question though.
At the same time, as is often the case, the statements that Trump makes trying to explain his decisions only exacerbate the uncertainty surrounding his actual plans. For example, in the case of the Gulf of Mexico, he mentioned the Gulf’s economic importance to America, and just the "beauty and appropriateness" of the new name. In the case of Lake Ontario, the Trump administration is obviously attempting to overcome the sense of growing discontent among Americans, fueled by widespread rejection of the fruitless and protracted war with Iran and the current confrontation with Canada – something many Americans simply can’t wrap their heads around. With the November midterm elections approaching, the White House needs at least some kind of "success," even if a purely symbolic one.
The choice of geographic targets for attack might stem from the White House's notion of America’s greatness. Rhetoric and symbolic gestures reflect the expectations of those who associate national greatness with patriotism and traditional values. The reasons for this are of dual nature with the renamings simultaneously aimed at the American electorate, which values a symbol of national superiority, and at the international community as a signal of Washington’s tough stance.
However, looking at this from the standpoint of deeper, longer-term motives, Trump's decisions to rename things are an attempt to bring global politics back to the times when open, undisguised cynicism reigned supreme. All masks are finally down, the cards are on the table, and positions are once again laid out point-blank: the United States considers itself "more equal than everyone else," and can do whatever it deems necessary to protect its own interests. There is a new round of the great geopolitical game beginning, where the old rules and conventions no longer apply.
Accordingly, state borders are never drawn once and for all - the process of global re-division has never stopped; it is simply picking up becoming more visible during certain periods. The history of geopolitics continues, and Trump's current rhetoric is part of this process. His "geographical" statements are two-pronged. On the one hand, they mean to counter "America's enemies," while on the other, they lay the groundwork for a profound and long-term restructuring of relations even with traditional "friends" and "allies," who will now have to get used to a new, much more assertive style of interaction with the United States.
Changing geographic names can be the first step in a military expansion, or it can serve as a long-term palliative. When, in January 2026, Trump threatened to seize control of resource-rich and strategically located Greenland - either through economic coercion, or even military force - he provoked collective outrage among his fellow NATO allies, and ended up in certain isolation. Had he started off by renaming the island, how would the other NATO members have reacted to this?
For example, contrary to expectations, the unilateral renaming of Lake Ontario, which is a direct infringement on Canadian sovereignty, has not yet provoked a major diplomatic crisis.
Is Trump taking a "different path" with Lake Ontario or the Gulf of Mexico? A name change is an unambiguous, but formally less aggressive, demonstration of sovereignty. Geographical names are not simply toponyms; they are markers of influence. By renaming a geographical object, Trump is sending a clear signal: this is our sphere of influence, our territory, and we are free to call it whatever we want. It is an act of symbolic appropriation. Ultimately, it is an attempt to erase the "un-American" component from the common space, thus underscoring US dominance in a particular region.
That being said, the limitations of such symbolic expansion are quite obvious. It is not very hard to imagine, for example, that Trump's burning interest in Greenland and Canada is dictated by a practical desire to lay claim to a significantly larger sector of the Arctic. This is a struggle for resources, transport routes, and a military presence in a region, whose importance will only grow with climate change and melting ice. Discussions about the impending re-division of the Arctic have been going on for quite some time. At the end of August, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once again pointed to the NATO countries’ undisguised intention to turn the region into a new front to curb the development of Russia and its allies. According to him, the West is deliberately stoking up military mistrust, while simultaneously working to undermine Russia's legitimate rights to international cooperation in the region, thus setting the stage for further escalation of tensions in the Far North. i
Is Washington going to demand that the rest of the world starts using the new names for the objects renamed by Trump? If so, such an approach from a superpower would contradict the very logic of the exceptional "greatness of America."
After all, such hegemonic logic, so vividly represented by Trump's ideas about the potential annexation of Greenland, the incorporation of Canada into the United States, and the return of the Panama Canal, leaves no room for any formal approval from the international community. Rather, it expects the world to obediently accept the facts.ii
Trump's exercises in topography might be viewed as a curious example of symbolic politics crossing over into the realm of geography. By changing commonly accepted geographic names, Trump tests the boundaries of the permissible. As a master of political performance, he demonstrates that he can do things that seem impossible or absurd, yet the world will just turn a blind eye. The international community may be outraged, the UN may disagree, but within the US, voters can say, "Our president is so powerful that even geography obeys him."
In fact, this is an attempt to project power by changing reality through language. Control over language, in this case, geographic names, creates the impression of control also over one’s perception of reality. This brings to mind the classic technique of creating new toponyms to assert a new ideology. Renaming things is a cheap way to "expand" America symbolically without the need to use resources to physically seize territory. Trump, a populist, uses this tool to create the impression that with him at the helm, the United States has ushered in a new era, where old rules no longer apply and America calls the shots.
Whether such a policy can succeed, given the chaotic and spontaneous nature of current global politics is anyone’s guess though. Such a development cannot be completely ruled out, given America's economic and military might, much of which is still there, but such symbolic "victories" are clearly not enough. Trump's expansionist rhetoric is simply unable to conceal the fact that the United States' influence in international affairs is steadily declining.
With the emerging world order shifting the balance of power away from the United States, any claims to exercising "control" over this or that territory through the restoration of "correct" names only highlight the lack of results in real-world politics.
The views of the author are his own and may differ from the position of the Editorial Board.
[1] https://interaffairs.ru/news/show/57045
[2] https://ru.valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/voyny-narrativov
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