I’m wondering what everyone else thinks is in our future as Canadians?
Do we think Trump is going to be stupid enough to try to invade Canada or redraw border lines?
Will the trade war continue for years or will Trump wuss out like last time?
We we continue to buy US products after they’ve now screwed us a second time?
I know I’m in the camp that whatever happens, I’m planning on completely excluding the USA from my life as much as possible.
We can see from their Russian masters how an American invasion would take.
They’d try to grab and hold strategic areas and resources, while using missiles and aircraft to cripple the economy and infrastructure and spread fear nationwide.
However, we can remember that the US has tried to invade many other countries and they’ve failed every time. And while we may never have the tanks and aircraft to match them in open warfare, even much poorer countries than Canada were able to successfully repel the American forces.
And in this scenario we’d have a massive untamed border to use to make counter strikes, and would likely get significant military support from allies around the world and in the US as well.
So it would be monumentally devastating on both sides. It would be a catastrophically stupid endeavour. Which doesn’t rule it out, they have extremely stupid people in charge.
But personally I believe the US would descend into civil war before this happens, with “blue” states having suppressed voting rights trying to secede.
How? By waving little round signs? By holding sing-alongs? By getting outraged whenever anyone doesn’t like the latest Disney movie? What gives you the impression that anyone on the American left would be willing to expend the kind of effort and sacrifice necessary to mount a serious revolt?
I feel and share your rage about the inaction by the American mainstream left.
My hunch that they’d change their tune before allowing their country to engage in outright war with Canada is nothing more than combination of a hunch and naive optimism.
We certainly can’t bank on my hunch — we need to prepare as if you’re correct.
Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for this possibility, starting yesterday.
We can use the money we were pissing away on F35s to create a national corps, who would be trained in the types of guerrilla warfare we’d need in this scenario. And be cross-trained to respond to climate emergencies such as floods and hurricanes and fires. And help build out infrastructure to shore up our east-west corridors and access to the north.
I so hope those F35s do not come to Canada, I know it will be a learning curve that pilots and mechanics will have to under go if we get the other ones but as I understand it we will get the rights to make replacement parts and do the repairs to the European ones.
That should be the default for any military equipment.
Having our armed forces reliant of the goodwill of some other country is a risk to the military ability to do their job.
I hope they do - the 16 we’ve committed to buying anyway - and that as soon as they arrive our engineers immediately start taking them apart so that we can incorporate their technology into our own planes or planes produced by our actual allies. The ones we don’t take apart can be used in exercises to determine the best ways to shoot them down.
The strategic situation favors the US immensely, with all our cities situated directly on the border. There’s basically no way to mount any kind of serious defence of Canada. Every city, almost every strategically valuable location, would be lost in days.
But our nation is superbly suited to guerilla warfare, with our vast forests providing excellent cover against aerial and satellite observation, and the CAF is superbly good at fighting against superior numbers and firepower because they train around the assumption that they will be fighting an enemy that outclasses them in equipment and numbers. Manuever warfare, hit and run strikes and defeat in detail are core to CAF tactics, and they know how to fight in ways that maximize their impact while minimizing losses.
They’re also very, very good at what they do. Canadians routinely demolish Americans in wargames and training operations. Our training standards are much higher and it bears results. This isn’t much help against the sheer scale of the American military; a holding action like the one Ukraine is putting up against Russia would be functionally impossible. But a guerilla war would make the Americans pay a heavy toll for every day they tried to remain here.
The US would control the cities, but all of those strategic resources that Trump wants are deeper in the interior and much more vulnerable to hit and run attacks by a determined Canadian military presence, while ordinary resistance fighters would be able to launch terror strikes against vulnerable targets all across the continental US. They would have to place security forces everywhere, while we can choose to strike anywhere. Just the financial and political weight of protecting every state capitol, every senators home, every factory, every distribution centre, every power plant… Hell, every mall and school if we want to go that far… Would be absolutely crushing. How long would the American people put up with going through checkpoints to get to work, being pulled over and searched my soldiers to get to the grocery store, all while watching bombs blow up in their neighbourhoods and their tax dollars get pissed away on the world’s largest and most expensive national security operation? America is swimming in debt and piling on more to give tax breaks to billionaires, and a right wing government has no way to embrace the kind of radical economic thinking that could try to solve those problems. How long could they even sustain an occupation for?
There’s also the fact that Canadians are well trained on all US military equipment, and so would both know what to expect and know how to use anything they captured.
And US Intelligence is littered with Canadians; Canadians have written a lot of the software and designed a lot of the hardware the US military uses.
Oh, and in general, Canadians are more highly educated.
A question from someone who knows nothing about warfare… As a commonwealth country, could we expect support?
We have allies in the Commonwealth, in NATO and in the EU. But it’s really an open question if any of them would willingly defy the US to support us. I’d like to hope so.
Unfortunately, any support would be largely meaningless, mostly consisting of sanctions against the US. The reason being, any military support, even just equipment like we’re sending to Ukraine, has to cross an ocean to get to us. An ocean that would be controlled by the US navy and air force. There’s not a lot anyone can do to counter that.
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We need to take cues from Ukraine and work on a drone airforce and navy.
Get millions of the things.
We have the robotics capability to lead the world in this.
The CAF is already working on those things as we speak. Trust me, every single lesson that can possibly be gleaned from Ukraine is being studied backwards and forwards across the entire military. From the highest levels to the most basic grunts, the CAF are studying every report, every video, every anecdote that comes out of Ukraine. And yes, absolutely both drone and anti-drone systems are being acquired as we speak, along with new anti-air and anti-tank capabilities, and a new frontline service rifle.
Fingers crossed because most battlegrounds would be in blue states. I hope that if he tries to force blue states to fight their neighbors, those states would rather secede and fight back
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As a Canadian it would not surprise me if Carney were to offer that at some point.
I grew up in a location where a significant number of my teachers in school were US draft dodgers. Pretty sure it would happen again.
All of my profs at (Canadian) university were American they left because of the Kent State shooting .