What would be the sequence of events if one UN member invades another UN member for the simple sake of expansion. I know there’s an implicit trust among allies for this not to happen but what, legally or militarilly could take place among UN members if the US did decide to forcefully occupy a Canadian province? Are other UN members legally binded to bail out the victim nation? Is this possibility even part of the UN charter?
What technically, aside from popular opinion, is preventing the US from annexing Canada and Mexico?
UN members are not supposed to go to war, except in cases of self-defense or to enforce UN Security Council resolutions.
That said, the UN’s ability to enforce its policy is limited to the willingness of the member states to do so. There is no UN army, nor can the UN tax or force member states to give money.
I don’t think there is a very big chance of the US invading Canada, though. We plan to subvert them from within.
I think you need security council approval to impose sanctions as punishment for atricious behavior and since the US has a veto i don’t see that happening.
You could take it to the world court, but i think the US ignores their rulings.
Well, you could start with a couple of million of angry Albertans, most of whom are armed with guns. We’re basically Texas North.
But give us a kiss and a trinket or two, and you might just convince us to join you voluntarily. But you’ll probably have to take our pretty but dumb sister province British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, the homely one. (-:
Just kidding, fellow Canadians. I kid because I love.
Ahem. This is precisely what happened when Iraq invaded and sought to annex Kuwait in 1991.
For those who have forgotten that incident, let me remind then that prompt and ultimately effective armed action was taken by the international community under the auspices of the United Nations.
Of course, the promptness and effectiveness of the action did depend on the willingness of other states to answer the UN’s call and send troops; they were under no obligation to. And, if one of the Permanent Members of the Security Council had decided to veto any action, there wouldn’t have been a call to answer.
The lack of any call from the UN wouldn’t have prevented Kuwait, and any other state which was willing, from fighting. While the UN Charter generally outlaws the use of force, it does create exceptions for self-defence, including collective self-defence through regional security organisations (such as NATO). Since the invasion by Iraq was itself an illegal use of force, armed self-defence (including collective armed self-defence) was perfectly justified, even without any UN resolution. The Security Council served to organise and co-ordinate the resistance to Iraq, but not to legitimate it. It was already legitimate.
The legal position would be same if the US invaded Alberta, but of course the political reality would be different. For obvious reasons there would be no Security Council Resolution on the subject, and not many states would join Canada in fighting the US. If decency and morality did not deter the US from such an action, then the political, diplomatic, commercial and economic implications would probably be a bigger deterrent than the military implications.
I guess the Canadians have nowhere near the armed force of the USA, but I’m sure their forces are considerably stronger, better trained and better equipped than Iraq’s. So it’d be no cake-walk.
I doubt the Canadians would put up with it for very long-- first they would issue a great big “WTF???” to Washington. If that didn’t send the Yanks back home then much, much, much blood would spill. Some Americans would probably aid, comfort and perhaps even fight for the Canadians (even if it was treason) because such an invasion would be unthinkable to most of us.
Probably after a lot of pain, suffering and death, someone here in the USA would wake up, overthrow the Bush Administration, and we’d withdraw.
(We are talking about Bush, right? What other American would be wacko enough to invade Canada?)
And certain Canadians who seem to support current American aggression more than most Americans do, would probably be quite torn over which side to take.
We’re not dumb, just been samplin’ the local crops!
Actually, wasn’t it more or less tried? Back in the 1800’s there was a big controversy over where the border should be. The States wanted it considerably further north than it ended up.
First, let us not forget that UN Security Council authorization is NOT the only way in which fighting a war may be legal under international law. There is also individual self defense (Canada fights back against the US) and collective self-defense (Canada and all its allies fight back against the US). The right to self defense are explicitly endorsed in Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Now, the North Atlantic Charter bounds all members to come to the defense of another member if they are attacked, in accordance with Article 51.
Although the command structure of NATO would end up in chaos (since the organization would be unable to work by consensus, as it has, if the US is the aggressor, and because an American general is always the supreme commander of NATO forces), I’m willing to bet that Article 5 of the NATO charter, when read with the UN Charter, provides ample legal justification for a collective self-defense action by the 24 other NATO countries to aid Canada against US invasion.
!) The UN is not in any way an alliance. It contains people we hate and hope they should die en masse.
No, it was under the fiction of the UN and under the practical control and auspices of the US. The US could have won without any allies, and in fact Schwarzkopf set up his batle plan so he could win even if every one of them save the British were totally routed. Its also no secret that the Kuwaiti’s didn’t exactly spend a lot of time looking for support outside the US.
I’d actually be interested to see what would happen in terms of military assistance in such a case. Canada is still bound to Britain in many ways so there would be a strong incentive for them to come to Canada’s assistance. The other European nations would more than likely side with the Canadians, particularly if it should happen within memory of Iraq. Given the respective military might of Britain,Germany and France, it would probably be enough to make Washington have a change of mind I think.
Remember the necessary ability to project that force. Could the combined respective military might of Britain, Germany and France successfully cross the Atlantic against a hostile US Navy?
China, after all, may have a million-man army, but unless they’re swimming to Taiwan… you get the picture.
UDS is entirely correct that the war was carried out under UN auspices. I point out that the use of force resolution, asked for by President Bush and approved by Congress, stated in the operative section:
“The President is authorized, subject to subsection (b), to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677.”
Sounds like the United States Government agreed that it was operating under the auspices of those UN Security Council Resolutions.
I don’t see it as a problem. While the US navy is the largest in the world, the combined navies of these three should be sufficient to cause the US a major headache. They have a combined navy that would be enough to ensure the US has a really bad time of it. If nothing else their combined submarines can be guaranteed to sink a fair number of US ships. Also, keep in mind that the Europeans already have the technology to build and maintain military technology that is equal to the US. We aren’t talking about some newly developing economy here. (THe fact that they haven’t has caused a lot of political scientists who follow Realist political theory no end of headaches).
Besides, the US military might is dependent on the health of the US economy and this would suffer if Europe were to suddenly turn against them or if these three major economies were to aggressively compete against them.
Canada isn’t without its defence mechanisms. If US troops look like they might be heading to the tar sands of northern Alberta (I’m not so sure that a decent number of Albertans would object to joining the US) the government (federal) could take drastic action.
The plan would involve a huge media buy in the US. I’m talking every minute of airtime for a week or longer. The air time will be filled with duets by Anne Murray and Celine Dion set to the imagery of hockey and seal clubbings. The US would capitulate within 3 days.
