Assume the United States, right now, invaded Canada.
Assuming that no other country becomes involved in our invasion – and set aside the political and economical fall out of such a move – how hard would it be for the U.S. to takeover Canada?
My question boils downs to this: U.S. military vs. Canadian military. Would it be a cakewalk or a bloodbath?
Is the general populace of Canada armed?
-FrL-
Initially takeover wouldn’t be too hard. But I imagine in the long term it would be hard to quell the civil unrest.
Sounds like another war I know of.
I don’t think either side really has the heart for a long, atrocity-filled war. I’d think that the southern quarter of the country would pretty soon be declared a neutral zone by the Canadian gov’t (with perhaps the exception of the Great Lakes and east, if they decide to hold the border,) and the forces at their disposal would retreat far into the hinterland. If a peaceful solution wasn’t reached immediately, it would then fall upon the Canadian forces to either surrender or dig in.
If they dig in, I’d say it would be as bad or worse than if we invaded Iran and Iraq combined, at the same time. With the addition of snow. I mean, Russia couldn’t even eradicate Chechen fighters in a decade. Even after Canada abandoned a quarter of its territory it would still involve – and I want to put this in caps and bolds – THE LARGEST LAND INVASION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
That said, the final result would never be in doubt, provided both parties have irresolute wills. In reality, it would come down to whichever government and people were most accepting of casualites.
It would be a bloodbath. The source of the blood would depend on the purpose of the invasion. Basically, does the US want to minimize death and injury to Canadian residents, or does the US want to minimize death and injury to its own military?
That’s a hard assumption to make, because Canada is a member of NATO, and would be able to call on other NATO members to help in repelling the invasion. The fact that the US is also a member of NATO would cause problems, but the UK, France, etc., would pretty inevitably get involved in various ways.
A lot of people would die, but the war would be totally one-sided. Canada has virtually no capability to defend itself against the United States. It’s simply too close and totally undefended, a 4,000 kilometre border, and almost everything important in Canada is two hundred miles or less from where the attack could be launched. The Canadian Armed Forces is well armed and highly professional, unlike the Iraqi army; the problem is that it’s small, and in modern war, it’s usually shoot first and win. By the time the Armed Forces knew it was under attack and could respond, it would be crippled. To use an example, Canada has a number of state-of-the-art warships, but the USA knows where they all are. Assuming it’a a surprise attack, the first warning they get is when they’re attacked. Canada’s Armed Forces is not arrayed or prepared to defend itself against such an attack, so we’d never see it coming.
Give Canada time to prepare and it could get bloodier, but assuming any degree of strategic surprise, it would be in Canada’s best interests to offer only token resistance, get the government out of the country to a sympathetic nation (which would be pretty much all of them) to represent Canada in absentia, distribute the military’s small arms as quickly as possible, and manage a prolonged guerrilla war.
So a war would potentially be a LOT worse than Iraq; Canada is after all physically bigger by two orders of magnitude, more heavily populated, geographically continguous to the USA, and under any realistic scenario a resistance would have substantial foreign support. It would be nearly impossible for the United States to even prevent Canadians (who look and sound just like Americans) from entering the USA and attacking military targets; just THAT problem alone would be a national security disaster waiting to happen.
One more thing: there are over 800,000 Canadians living in the U.S. The U.S. would need to intern them for the duration of the war, and rounding them up and putting them into internment camps would use up considerable resources. If other countries started active hostilities on the Canadian side, ther would likely be hundreds of thousands of other enemy aliens to be dealt with too.
I don’t think it would be all that difficult to round us up. We’re mostly the type of people to register with our consulate AND to come legally (therefore the US State Department can find us easily); if we were rounded up, well, at least we’d all have civilized company. 
If it were a simple matter of US military v. Canadian military, the US would win. However, give the Canadian populace weapons and it’d be another story.
Would we be taking over ALL of Canada, or just the fun parts?
Not really suited to General Questions.
Moved to GD.
samclem
All parts of Canada ARE fun! duh.
I guess the corollary is do we bother with Quebec or just give it a pass?
[da super fan]
Wait a minute here, are we talkin’ full sized US troops or mini US troops?
[/dsf]
I think it would pretty much be a cake walk. No offense to our Canadian bretheren and sisteren but I doubt the US military would even break a sweat. As for the occupation…I’m not so sure how much resistance the Canadians would put up to be honest. It would depend I suppose on WHY the US would do something so boneheadedly stupid as to invade Canada. Also, it would depend on how the US played its invasion. Turtledove, in his alternative history of WWI series speculated that the US would try for an alliance with the French speaking areas of Canada…offering them autonomy for cooperation against the areas more closely aligned with the British. Maybe we could or would do something similar…again, it would depend on WHY we were invading.
Even if the Canadians resisted to the max though (I’m not sure, but I don’t think that the Canadian population by and large is even armed) I just don’t think they could sustain a high level of insurgency there. Certainly its a vast country, but the more populated areas are also closer to the US…and also in the more livable zones too boot. Also there is the matter of resuppling the insurgency. Again, there is a lot of coast line up there to bring in stuff…except that the US Navy would be patrolling that coast and presumably stopping any vessel trying to bring in guns and butter to the insurgents.
All in all if the US decided to invade we certainly could. If we decide to occupy Canada we certainly could…pretty much indefinitely if we had the political will to do so (something about as implausable as I can think of…nearly as implausable as the US invading Canada in the first place). There really isn’t much the Canadians could do to stop us. Muahahahaha! 
The real enemy, however, is…BELGIUM!
-XT
Hmmm…maybe we could just take Windsor and give them Detroit in exchange.
Assuming they had warning, how long would it take for the Canadians to build some nukes ( they probably have the plans ) ? A nuclear armed Canada would be a whole new proposition.
Ah, but once we institute the new secret pass-phrase (Tell me all about that houseboat over on route 6.) we’ll be able to tell which ones are sneaky Canadians, and which are true-blue Americans. Good ol’ yankee enginuity will triumph every time!
In the canadian military came out to fight the US in pitched battle it wouldn’t last long. If it disperessed itself in the major cities I recon’ it could easily give the US serious headache, even if the final result was not in doubt(in the past disappearing into the wilderness would have worked, but not sure with modern recconisance technology, whether that would work).
Just give me five more months so I can get my degree. Then you’re free to take the city.