The Aerospace Republic Shall Destroy Empire

EM Burlingame brought us two concepts: The Land Power and the Sea Power. These are defined, by him, accordingly:

• Land Powers are continental/territorial powers that derive strength from control of large land masses (especially the Eurasian "Heartland"), making them difficult to defeat or project against from overseas but focused inward on land dominance.
• Sea Powers are maritime/trade-oriented powers that project influence globally via naval and oceanic control, relying on flexible sea lines of communication, commerce, and alliances.

He cites the following in constructing these definitions:

• Halford J. Mackinder's Heartland theory (also called the Mackinder thesis or plan): ""What MacKinder was talking about was any threat to Sea Powers by Land Powers. Russia is a land power China is a land power US is both a sea and land power." He ties this to Mackinder's ideas about controlling the Eurasian Heartland (Central Asia) to dominate the "World-Island" and threaten sea-based powers, including Western strategies of containing or encircling it through perpetual instability. He also alludes to related classical geopolitics (e.g., broader discussions of Rome's shift, Praetorian dynamics, and dynastic land-based systems in China).
• (secondarily) Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (for the maritime side) or Carl Schmitt's Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation (for the elemental/ontological contrast between land-based vs. sea-based ways of life and power), though Mackinder is his most explicit and repeated anchor in public statements. These are not presented as exhaustive academic footnotes but as shorthand for the enduring land-vs-sea dynamic he applies to contemporary great-power rivalry and civilizational analysis.

These are good concepts and efinitions. They have strong explanatory power, and should be applied accordingly to current and past events.

However, I think we have reason to add a third term and with it a definition.

the Aerospace Empire posting will continue indefinitely https://t.co/ehRkLb3Wm5 pic.twitter.com/ZEkrmSh422

— 🇺🇸 Based Americana 🇺🇸 (@basedamericana) December 29, 2025

The Air Power is not the Sea Power or the Land Power.

It has elements of the Sea Power--a concern for communication, commerce, and relations--and of the Land Power--control of a large land mass--but mitigates or lacks the downsides of both because its real power is in a different medium entirely.

Land Powers, go figure, are famous for Armies. Sea Powers are famous for Navies. Air Powers care about domination of the Air and Space above everything else. Air Powers, therefore, have the dynamism of Sea Powers without the need for imperialism and extrative and exploitative relations due to being materially self-sufficient; they have the luxury of being able to reflect inward, be hard to defeat, with a reduced/eliminated risk of solipsism due to being engaged in exploration and expansion into the Final Frontier.

The United States is, at this time, the sole Aerospace Power. It is unlikely that anyone else will ever become one.

We now have an answer to Things To Come and its Wings Over The World hellscape dystopian future- an answer that is both rebuttal and rebuke. Air Powers do not need, as Sea Powers do, to become imperialist and extractive against neighbors and distant shores; they have the ability to be Good Neighbors and instead help them to better themselves, building them up to become full upright powers in their own right, while retaining the power to obliterate those who seek to disrupt the Good Order of Civilization and its development. Despite media bullshit to the contrary, the Air Power is putting the Sea Power (Globohomo) into the trash heap of history- sinking it under the waves.

It is no surprise, therefore, that only in America could the Air Power manifest because only America has the paradigm needed to make it so- and it is making it so again now after generations of Sea Power subversion because one German (Friedrich List) took the American System back to Europe and the Sea-based Empire that is now Globohomo never forgave or forgot it.

This is what Trump is bringing back, and nothing can stop it or him because this is the idea whose time has come. Empire is over.