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As soon as I heard that the United Nations would be voting on a new map of the world, one that better reflected Africa’s true size, I knew the U.S. would vote against it. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. I wish I could say I’m clairvoyant, or that I have genius insight into U.S. foreign policy, but this was entirely predictable.
As you may remember from high school, most maps of the world use the Mercator projection, which features considerable distortions, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe you’ve wondered why Greenland and Africa look roughly the same size on such maps, when Africa is actually 14 times larger, or why Antarctica looks infinitely large, when that isn’t true in real life. Discussion of those and other discrepancies have been around for a long time. They even made their way into a 2001 episode of “The West Wing.” In season two, members of a cartographic society meet with White House press secretary C.J. Cregg on Big Block of Cheese Day to lobby for a change to the map, blowing her mind in the process by literally turning her world upside down. It turns out that it’s difficult to squish a sphere into a flat rectangle without some disfigurement, but the Mercator errors have finally led to pushback.
Following a proposal from the West African country of Togo, the U.N. has voted to encourage the use of maps that make sense. This isn’t even a mandate, only persuasion and advice. With six nations abstaining, the vote was 164-1 in favor, with — you guessed it — the U.S. as the lone holdout. That sound you may have heard was billions of people rolling their eyes at once. In a statement, Yaryna Ferencevych, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, tried to offer a rationale for the no vote, saying that the resolution “mocks the work and purpose of this institution” while urging other nations to vote no as well.
(Photo by Bedirhan Demirel/Anadolu via Getty Images) An infographic on the “United Nations’ efforts to promote maps that more accurately represent Africa.”
“While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions, the United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to — as its most vocal and committed proponents plainly and openly state,” Ferencevych continued. “Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice.’ Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote, are barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility. When the United Nations questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world, and is not taken seriously, time and again, we point to resolutions such as this.”
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OK, so clearly that struck a nerve. But why? Perhaps this resolution wasn’t as minor as it seemed at first glance. In fact, it could be that the Mercator map explains President Donald Trump’s strange obsession with seizing Greenland. Maybe he really does think it’s that gigantic? Of course, ignorance isn’t Trump’s only possible motivation — knowing Greenland’s presumed vast troves of natural minerals, some of it comes down to plain old greed.
But that probably isn’t why the U.S. voted no. It seems to be more about childish opposition to anything positive the U.N. might do, no matter how inconsequential, in an effort to delegitimize the body, which has been the target of Republican attacks since its founding. Anti-U.N. sentiment has been a broad part of Trump’s agenda since his first term, from abandoning the organization’s bodies like the World Health Organization and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Trump has tried to recreate his own U.N., ironically called the “Board of Peace,” even though it supports Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. A vote to reject objective reality — the size of continents on maps — verges on pure flat-earther nonsense, existing in the same realm as anti-vaccine rhetoric and the denial of climate change caused by humans. In other words, it fits right into the MAGA worldview, which thrives on A.I. slop and disinformation. It’s also a less-than-subtle nod toward the “glory days” of racist colonialism.
By the way, the U.S. can sometimes veto U.N. resolutions even when they are vastly out-voted by other nations. That’s because the U.S. is one of the Permanent Five, a group of countries including Russia, France, China and the U.K. that are given a permanent slot on the U.N. Security Council. Any one of these five countries can veto something outright, but as this Mercator vote wasn’t related to that council, the U.S. couldn’t throw an official tantrum here. The resolution was adopted.
Whether little stunts like this will actually work is another question, but in the meantime they work to make the U.S. look even more unserious — and, ironically, smaller — on the world stage. If 164 other countries can’t even expect the U.S. to acknowledge basic geography, what does it say about our ability to lead on far more consequential matters? You don’t need a map to see that this is leading nowhere good.
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