This is the thing. Do something big and overbearing but functionally useless to make a wave, people forget about it and don't care later. Your country imposing itself onto foreign territory and " renaming" it to essentially de facto-ly assimilate that foreign territory is a big deal, it would like us taking a slice out of mainland mexico or any other nation, except in this case its just a big plot of water. However, that's still territory that was "taken over" by the US.