The USA could not turn a blind eye. That would be insane. I mean, it would be fifty times worse for American security than the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s not a matter of being friendly to Canada, it’s a matter of the USA’s fundamental national security, and
I think you are overestimating how easy an operation that is. Russia and China don’t have the sealift capability to pull this off. Hell, even after you land, THEN what? It’s… a long drive from Halifax or Vancouver to Ottawa. People talk about Russia invading over the Arctic, which is adorable. Landing troops around Tuktoyatuk and then driving an army over an eternity of some of the nastiest, human-free wilderness you can possibly imagine would be only marginally easier and faster than invading Mars. Even against the way smaller Canadian Forces, this is just logistically impossible. It would absorb their entire military capability to pull this off.
There is an old joke that Canada has too much geography and not enough history. But in terms of national defense, geography is actually our greatest asset. There’s 195 or whatever countries in the world and 194 of them cannot realistically invade us.
In fact, in terms of CONVENTIONAL war (nuclear war, we’re all fucked) the USA is the only risk to Canada. In intelligence terms there are two factors; capability and intent. Other countries may have vague intent, but they have zero capability. The USA has, in effect, 99 percent capability - they’d roll us over, it’s the occupation that would be hard - but in modern times, zero intent. Now there is intent. And don’t tell me there isn’t. There ABSOLUTELY is.
To borrow Stalin’s analysis: How many aircraft carriers does Russia have? One. Maybe. Sorta. If you squint hard enough.
Assuming it’s based in Murmansk, eventually, how far is Murmansk from Halifax? Google says 5,651 km. There’s no ports along the way that would be friendly supply spots for the Russian fleet. Which would have to include troop carriers, if Russia wants to invade Canada. A successful Russian invasion would need to have an incredibly long supply chain, subject to interdiction by Canada, but maybe also still by friendly NATO allies (assuming NATO hasn’t been destroyed by the US).
And China? They’re better off, they have two carriers currently, and a third close to coming online. But how far would the Chinese fleet need to travel to reach Vancouver? It’s 8,648 km from Qingdao naval base to Vancouver, with no friendly supply ports along the way.
The only country with the military resources to invade Canada is the United States. Short supply lines, access by land, major military (land, naval and air) already close to Canadian targets.
I"m not aware that half the world is advocating 25% tariffs to crash the Canadian economy, and threatening forcible annexation of Canada. Please provide a list of these countries. The only one I’m aware of is the United States.
I don’t think Americans get to decide they should not be considered a hostile nation by Canadians, any more than Russians get to decide that they should not be considered a hostile nation by Ukrainians.
The real problem here is that it’s impossible to tell how much trump is senilely running off at the mouth and how much he and his evil coterie means what he says.
It’s hardly a joking matter in any case, but there is a huge difference to the credibility of hypothetically, George HW Bush or Bill Cinton having said such a thing as an offhand comment at a cocktail party while in office versus what trump is saying repeatedly now.
In any sane world, trump’s bloviating would have no credibility because he’d be a real estate tycoon with an X account and delusions of grandeur.
Instead in our insane and all too real world, he’s equipped with MAGA, the US DoD, and the whole project 2025 apparatus of sub rosa corporatist Fascism. And a deep-seated desire to emulate his evident hero, and possible handler, Vladimir Putin.
My bottom line:
It is incumbent on Canadians and their government to treat this seriously. Because the odds it *is* serious are far higher than zero.
My take is Canada is faced with the absolute reality that Trump has many imperialistic ambitions and currently Canada, Greenland and Panama are in his crosshairs. As President of the USA he has the power to enact this will - so of course the odds are far higher than 0.
I can only see two reasons that the odds of him attacking are not 100%. First is because he is President of the USA which also has established institutions that challenge him to easily enact his will in all regards immediately. But those safeguards are far weaker than they were in 2016, because (1) his team is more experienced (and demented) now and (2) the USA constitution and legal system has proven itself to be inadequate to control the power of the presidency if a crazy person is elected.
The second is because he is incompetent, easily manipulated, old and unhealthy and in general just a shit person. But - in his mind taking over Canada, Greenland, Panama is a sure-fire win to develop his personal wealth and legacy. So he’ll do it - if he can.
If Canadians think their situation is akin to Ukraine’s, that is the height of blindness to one’s own privilege.
And let me add, if an American thinks that life under Trump is comparable to a Russian’s life under Putin, that is even greater blindness to one’s own privilege.
That to be in close proximity and only periodically threatened with annexation should be regarded as a privilege. There but for the grace of Uncle Sam not exercising Manifest Destiny from the Gulf of America to the Beaufort Sea. But watch this space.
Not having to worry about getting pulled out of the car and beaten and shot during a traffic stop shouldn’t be regarded as a privilege either, but we all know what white privilege is.
Privilege, eh? Just like the guy on Fox last week who told Premier Ford that Canadians should think it a privilege to be forcibly annexed in a hostile takeover?
I’m barely old enough to remember the early 60s with the US losing it’s collective shit over missiles sited barely 90 miles from it’s sovereign borders. But since even before then our frozen and impossibly polite Canawegian cousins have maintained a stiff upper lip to the equivalence. And all they want is for the US to buy their energy resources and stay south of the 49th parallel.
This. Global-range power projection on the scale of invasions is certainly possible, but it’s something that requires a great deal of logistical infrastructure to pull off. Something that nobody but the US has bothered to develop, and would take a long time for somebody else to duplicate. I’m sure China could develop such an ability if it wanted but it would take years, it’s not something you can just slap together. And certainly not something that can be done without everyone else knowing.
But the US already has it, and even if it didn’t it doesn’t actually need it in this case.
Nobody has the sealift capability to pull off a continental invasion. Not even the USA. Not even remotely.
I doubt the USA could successfully invade e.g. Taiwan if it wanted too. Too far away from the nearest support and too big. Setting aside nukes the USA could eventually bombard it into military impotence. But landing troops in quantity to hold the ground would be very difficult in the face of even disorganized partisan resistance. Not because the partisans would be such fierce fighters, but because the distance to, and size of, the island is so big.
For those still trying to figure out how “serious” Trump is, well, let’s look to Greenland again:
Lots of people think Trump was “joking” about this, or just “rambling” or “blathering”.
Well, it’s one thing for the president to “joke” about this in a rally, or on Fox News, but here he is, saying the same damn things in an official call with the Government of Denmark. He’s damn serious about this.
And every reason they list for why Trump wants Greenland applies just as well to Canada. We’d be more difficult to annex, but also more profitable.
That’s simply not true. People VASTLY underestimate the difficulty of launching an invasion across an ocean. It has only been done by the US in modern times, and that was with the biggest war machine the world has ever seen. Look at the logistical difficulties that Britain had to project power to the Falkland Islands, and they were probably the #2 naval power projector in the world at the time. China has been preparing to invade Taiwan for 30 years, and the only reason they may stand a chance is that Taiwan is close enough to saturate them with land-based ballistic missiles. If Taiwan were even a few hundred miles further away they’d have no chance. There’s essentially no threat of a D-day style invasion by anyone but the United States and we have probably more military sealift, forward logistics bases, and force projection than the rest of the world combined. Even if the US military left Canada to stand on their own, and Russia or China put their full might into it, they wouldn’t be able to project enough power to be more than a skirmish. The (small) Canadian military could easily defeat any realistic military force crossing the ocean to attack them.
Edit: Sorry, I see a few people have addressed this already, I replied without reading the rest of the thread.
I don’t think so but I understand the appeal and reasonable heads could go either way on this.
To make a decision, Canada has to balance the value of intelligence it receives with the value and risk to the country of the intelligence it gives. The US has a lot more spying capability than Canada and, frankly, the US harbors a lot more non-state threats to Canada than Canada houses threats to the US. The US’s intelligence is potentially more valuable to Canada than Canada’s intelligence is to the US.
There’s almost no chance Canada will pull out. The worst that will happen (and it may be happening already) is that Canada will no longer share accurate intelligence about itself that it believes could be used against it. Frankly, from a strategy perspective, the best thing for Canada to do is to continue working in Five Eyes and retain its credibility so that it can be used a believable mechanism to feed bad intelligence to the US. For all we know, this may be happening too.
I don’t think Canada should quit the Five Eyes. I think Trump should quit saying stupid and counterproductive things. The world is mostly set up in the US’s favor already. Why piss off allies and trading partners when the benefits of free trade are, in the aggregate, so large?