The United States keeps running into the same strategic problem.

We say we want to compete with China without going to war.
We say we want to support allies without dominating them.
We say places like Greenland and the Arctic matter strategically.

And yet, when it comes to non-military power, the U.S. has almost nothing credible to offer.

In this solo episode, Daniel Stih breaks down why Greenland exposes a deeper flaw in U.S. strategy — not a failure of leadership, but a failure of available tools. When the only funded options are military force, sanctions, or profit-seeking private investment, even reasonable leaders are forced into bad choices.

This episode introduces a missing alternative:
a Federal Highway Act–style model for allied strategic infrastructure.

Instead of coercion or transactional deals, what if the U.S. built shared, civilian infrastructure as a long-term public good — the same way it once built the interstate highway system at home?

You'll hear:
• Why military power alone can't compete with long-term infrastructure investment
• Why Greenland isn't "broken" — it's underbuilt
• Why private markets can't justify highways, ports, or Arctic resilience
• How the interstate highway system solved a similar problem in 1956
• What a non-war U.S. power model could actually look like
• Why real leadership sometimes means inventing the option that doesn't exist yet

This is not an argument about politics.
It's a conversation about systems, incentives, and missing institutions.

Greenland is not the story.
Greenland is the test case.

If the U.S. wants influence without force, alignment without coercion, and competition without war — it needs a civilian strategic infrastructure model that matches the world we actually live in.

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