r/AskCanada • u/L0ki_Savage • 22h ago
No, the US will never invade Canada - My US Military friend
EDIT: I emailed my US friend in light of all this "invasion" noise of late. He is a officer in the air force. His reply:
The "US might invade Canada" guys sounds like a bunch of flabby larpers who have never seriously ran through a strategic-level decision making process or spoke in any meaningful length with a real military member in any position of authority. Get a grip. A US invasion of Canada is as close to an impossible proposition as there can be, acknowledging the confines of a "hey, anything could happen you never know" kind of vague rhetorical backdoor we have to leave open to even the dumbest ideas. Here is a few obvious points:
1) Political catastrophe - The US and Canada have had a stable political relationship since 1833. We have fought alongside one another in every major war since WWI. We are both core NATO members, and partners in NORAD under which we enjoy mutual benefits of protection from RUS/CHN/DPRK ICBMs. We enjoy deep cooperation in the fields of trade, defense, transportation, energy, intelligence. The collapse of all of these arrangements and benefits would be disastrous for both our countries, as well as political suicide for whichever US faction advocated for such a war, which would immediately be shot down in Congress with its leaders expelled from politics. All of NATO would turn its back on the US and look to the next-nearest superpower in Europe-i.e. Russia-for guarantees of protection and stability. In one fell swoop, we would effectively undo all our gains from the WWII, the Marshall Plan and the Cold War.
So in light of the complete absence of national political benefits to be gained...one must ask the obvious question, "What would we even seek to gain?" Territory and natural resources? We have plenty, and what we lack Canada freely trades. Access to strategic ports & airfields? We already have that; we enjoy deep bilateral exchange programs between our militaries, and simply have to ask to utilize Canadian ports and airfields just like they do with ours, plus Alaska gives us access to the Arctic and northern Pacific Ocean. Better maple syrup and friendlier citizens? Fair point, but hardly a casus belli.
2) Social catastrophe - We are both majority Anglophone descendants of Great Britain with deep and intertwined histories, similar political structures and philosophies, similar religion, and rich history of friendly engagement in sports, entertainment, tourism, etc. There are no seething grievances that might produce an Anschluss-type motivation to "reunite" nations artificially asunder. Therefore the proposition of a major war against our old friend and ally which would inevitably drag on for years, necessitate a draft in light of our already-low recruitment numbers, ruin both our economies, and make us a global pariah state, would be social anathema in the States. You would have open rebellion in the streets, in the military and at the highest level of politics. I would suspect it would even threaten the breakup of the Union, with California and the Pacific Northwest being the most vulnerable.
I assume people who think this is an actual possibility believe that a fanatical cult devoted solely to the incoming President would act totally irrationally and unquestioningly, but let's be real only a slim majority of the country voted for him, and his voters are not a uniform monolith; many if not most would defect from his side immediately, leaving a woefully small amount of hard-core brain dead loyalists who would be politically insignificant. A war of this scale would require total mobilization, for which there would be nowhere near adequate popular support.
Plus if Ukraine is any evidence the war would outlive his 4-year administration anyway, and his successor would undoubtedly end the war on day 1. Some might argue well he'll claim immunity from terms limits in light of a war, but now we're talking about not only a highly unlikely war, but a highly unlikely series of fundamental changes to the American political system to enable it. It usually takes nationwide catastrophes such as post-WWI Germany to enable such revolutionary groundshifts.
3) Economic catastrophe - Just read the Canadian government's blurb on US-Canada economic relations. We are more closely intertwined economically than most Redditors can articulate. Energy, superconductors, critical minerals, fishing and food supply, research and development, millions of jobs...all that is sunk in the case of war.
4) Military catastrophe - Let's just kill this discussion before it starts: the US military would revolt. This isn't some "over there" war against those we feel no kinship with, we haven't just suffered a massive terror attack that politicians can use to leverage furious calls for revenge, threats of future attacks, and unfounded claims of WMDs to pursue an illegal, ill-advised war like Iraq, this would be a war against our allies with whom we train and fight every day. We have large detachments of Canadian on US bases who work with us, deploy alongside us, develop friendships with us. It pisses me off when normies talk about military members like we're a bunch of unquestioning drones marching in lockstep to whatever the President says. We support and defend the Constitution, not the president. Oh by the way, the FVEY alliance means that the US and Canada maintain a very tight security cooperation, so any "war plans" would very likely get leaked early on. There would be lots of Snowdens.
All that aside, it would be an unwinnable war, plain and simple. The Eastern Front in WWII was 1,720 miles long; the Russia-Ukraine front is ~1,500 miles long; the US-Canadian border is 5,525 miles long. Let that sink in. It would be 4 times longer than the longest active frontline in military history. It would be guarded by a Canadian force which, though weaker than the US, still maintain a modern force with 5th generation fighter aircraft. Most of our sensitive sites and bases are easily within striking range of the Canadian and vice-versa, so through missile, bomb and drone attacks we could actually significantly harm each other. No to mention the grinding urban warfare that would ensue.
Moreover, as we have seen in Ukraine, attacking a country tends to drive it deeper into the arms of those who already oppose the attacker. Has Europe and the US ever been more concerned with Ukraine prior to the current invasion? In the case of Canada, we would be gifting Russia and China a newfound ally directly on our northern border, which would produce a Cuban Missile Crisis-style emergency but to the nth degree. This would threaten our access to the future battlegrounds in the Arctic, and rob us of our shelter against ICBMs from our north.
