It’s more of a problem than you think. If European nations want to intervene in a US-Canada war, then they need to get their hardware across the sea intact in the teeth of what is indisputably the largest and most well-equipped navy in the world. (No slur on the training and morale of those sailors, but we’re talking simple numbers here.) They’d certainly cause losses, but it’s not a given that European armored divisions can simply appear in North America.
But we are talking about economies that, combined, equal a small percentage of the US’s defense budget. Going from a quick search, we’re looking at $379 billion for the United States in 2003, compared to $34.8b for the UK, $27b for France, and $23.1b for Germany – or, combined, less than 25% of that of the US. The US defense budget is astro-freakin’-nomical.
Oh, of course. This is lazy handwaving on both our parts. I recall a GD thread some time ago (I can’t seem to find it, though) on just what would happen if the United States said “th’ hell with it” and declared war on the entire world. Anyone know where that one ended up?
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I recall a GD thread some time ago (I can’t seem to find it, though) on just what would happen if the United States said “th’ hell with it” and declared war on the entire world.
[QUOTE]
We give them money, are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful, and they’re hateful.
They all hate us anyhow, let’s drop the big one now. - Randy Newman
The OP (and man of the followup post) have a fundemental flaw:
Like it or not might makes right, If the USA can take and hold the oil fields, or Canada, or the moon for that matter, it’s the USA’s and there is not a darn thing the UN can do about it (though it can try to retake it).
This is not nessecerally saying it is morally right, that is why we have God!
As for European military involvement, they absolutely could put some serious hurt on the U.S. Even if their navies can’t cross the Atlantic, they can still launch missiles or long-range bombers at us. And the shortest flight path for such death from above would go right over Canada, who would presumably be quite content to allow them passage.
Okay, to be serious for a moment - if the U.S. wanted to annex Alberta, there’s not a damned thing Canada could do about it. Man for man, our military is as good as any in the world, but it’s small and getting smaller.
But this underscores something important - the U.S. is NOT an imperial power. Here we are in Alberta sitting on one of the largest petroleum deposits in the world, connected to the U.S. by the world’s largest undefended border, and no one is even remotely worried about the U.S. taking it. It’s simply unthinkable.
If it happened, what would/could the world do? Mainly, economic sanctions. There is NO military solution. The ocean is huge, the U.S. Navy massive, and no other countries have force projection capabilities that could land any significant forces anywhere in North America.
So if the U.S. suddenly grew a goatee and morphed into the Evil US, it could take over Canada without breaking a sweat. Whether Canadians would rise up and fight back in a guerrilla war is another issue, but I don’t think we would. The Canadian psyche just isn’t into it. We’d roll over.
We do, however, have a secret weapon. You know Celine Dion? We’ve been growing copies in vats in Saskatchewan. Mess with us, and we’ll unleash the hordes.
I’m not sure how this de-volved into a US vs EU war, but the EU is under america’s thumb. Nevermind that the US has 110,000 thousand troops stationed in Europe already, there are a few dozen other insurmountable hurtles…
I’ll say that if the US engaged in military action against canada, the biggest obstacle would be from US citizens who would probably revolt, The constitution would be altered, and NATO could not survive any longer. Plus, we like having someone else to worry about all those vast miles of uninhabitable tundra.
When I bought the game Superpower, the first thing I did was begin a game as the USA and invade Canada.
What happenned?
Nearly the whole fricking world imposed trade sanctions on me. All the English-speaking countries, plus Belgium and Cuba declared war on me.
Belgium, Cuba and Australia attacked. (The game doesn’t simulate US naval force and transit issues properly). That didn’t work too good, and I routed the Belgians. Same goes for Cuba and Australia.
The UK attacked. They actually took Washington D.C. for 1 week, but then I pushed them back across the ocean.
By then I completely owned Canada.
Relevant? Probably not. But I just had to share that story, since envisioning US soil under Belgian attack makes me laugh to this day.
Keeping this in the realms of force projection involving conventional troops (that is, no transcontinental missles etc), it has to be mentioned that the european powers dont have a larger military because they dont want to. They certainly have the manpower as well as the technological know how. So while the US would have the upper hand straight off, it wouldn’t really take very long for these other countries to have a viable invasion force up and running within a few years at most. So basically, if it came to pass that the US invaded Canada, and the Europeans took offence at that, the US would pretty much have to take any threats from them seriously. That is, they would either have to retreat, or outright attack europe at that point, since any sort of delay would allow them too much time to build military resources. IF they were to do that, then force projection becomes moot since it would be in the European theater.
Again, this is all in the hypothetical what ifs and such and totally pointless once you start playing with the nasty weapons like nukes.
One complicating factor is that many of the countries allied to Canada through Nato have US military bases on their territory. If they came to Canada’s help, and declared war on Canada, presumably they could take all the US military on those bases as prisoners of war, and confiscate all the US military hardware they could get their hands on. (US civilians on those bases could be interned as enemy aliens too). Of course, those bases might want to resist capture, but surrounded by enemy territory, their options to do so might be limited by an unwillingness to raise the level of the conflict, and really piss the Europeans off.
