There is some information you might find interesting, Alex, on the topic of lunar settlement in my indomitus dot net slash space archive. In particular, there are physical landing sights for both Soviet and USA lunar landings which are identifiably territorial in pattern. The 1967 Outer Space treaty was deliberately negotiated by the Johnson administration to end the space “race” and lock out any possibility of future national sovereignty claims. Why? He made more money focusing national expenditures on war. And he got to see a lot more people killed that way, and we all know LBJ was a bloody butcher.

The Moon’s land surface area is comparable to several of the continents on Earth. So the comparison to a continent is useful in some ways.

The Moon’s potential energy location is also of considerable interest. It is higher ground than Earth. Which means that independent countries on the Moon run by independent individualists would be in a position to, say, drop a rock the size of a house on IRS headquarters in DC and take out a number of square blocks. Fun.

Actually, Argentina is the one that has done the most along those lines, going so far as to arrange for births to take place at its bases there so as to have “citizens” born there, and even claiming that Argentinian title to the Falkland Islands was justified by being necessary for its Antarctic “provinces”.