US invasion of Canada?

War Plan Red: The Invasion of Canada. It's top secret, don't show anyone.

Could the US invade Canada?

This is such a bonkers scenario, it's difficult to take seriously. 

Malcolm Nance writes about it here.

There are millions of points of contact between Canada and the USA. It’s not like Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1941. There are so many connections in civilian, military, and intelligence, I doubt the Americans could launch an invasion without Canada knowing in advance. Not that it would make much difference, other than, say, for Canadian authorities to debunk any false flag operation the US uses to justify their invasion.

From what I've been able to find online, Malcolm Nance really was a United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer specializing in naval crypotology; he has been a consultant for MSNBC, has written several books, and he did serve in Ukraine. However, his colleagues (people claiming to have first hand experience) claim he is a grifter: he went to Ukraine, bragged, took some pics for his new book, and buggered off. True? False? Sour grapes? Who knows? He sounds sane enough in the one video of his I watched. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't think he's provided that. 

But this drumbeat has been taken up by more and more and more people, and it's becoming unnerving. 

So buckle up and let's drive down crazy lane and say posit an American invasion of Canada. Even as, say, a fictional scenario for a Tom Clancy style thriller... 'cause that's what it sounds like. Fortunately, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) is actually a Canadian, so he'd be our agent on the inside. 

First the US pushes us with tariffs, border revisions, claims we aren't a real country (gee... just like Putin with Ukraine!). 

Eventually, they'd create a false flag operation: a bogus communist takeover of Canada, a terrorist attack blowing up our Parliament, something extreme. That would be followed by more propaganda and cyber attacks to disorient and paralyze any possible resistance. Infiltrators would move to arrest prominent Canadians. Military bases would be quickly occupied. 

It would be all over before anyone knew what was happening. 

Head on resistance to a US invasion would be flat out suicide, and I wouldn't expect our military to even try. Our border is thousands of miles long. Our cities are all right up against the US. Our military is underfunded and the Americans know where all our bases are. 

Instead, let's look at Finland, the Baltic States, Iraq and Northern Ireland for inspiration. 

Finland has bordered on the Russian/Soviet behemoth for decades and managed to remain independent. Of course, they have hundreds of lakes and large forests between their cities and the Russian border, giving them far more strategic depth than Canada has. Men in Finland are all conscripted into the army and trained to fight. If Canada is to survive with a hostile US to the south, we'd need to bring back universal conscription. That would take years of effort, first to create the infrastructure, get enough instructors, and then build out a conscript reserve army. Going by this scenario (a Trump invasion), we don't have that kind of time.

The Baltic States is perhaps an even better match to our circumstances: their cities are all within paradrop range of Russian territory, and they have no meaningful strategic depth. We have our forests, to which partisans could retreat, but all our population centres would be easily occupied. The Baltic States know it is unlikely they can hold off the Russian army until NATO reinforcements arrive. As such, they have distributed around their countries bunkers and arms caches, to serve as bases for insurgency efforts. It's a flexible, squishy defense. Asymmetric warfare, including terrorism, is the only real option (should we choose to fight) for us. Canada then should start stockpiling weapons and perhaps even more importantly explosives, and building remote bunkers. Citizens would have to be trained in how to avoid detection, how to cover their tracks, how to forage, survival skills, the works. American surveillance would be incredibly difficult to evade. 

That brings us to Iraq. It's mostly flat and open, with (seemingly) little cover, yet the Americans couldn't extinguish the resistance. IEDs, hit and run, and, well, terrorist attacks took a serious toll on American personnel. And Canadian, for that matter. The Iraqis did this while taking astronomical casualties. I am not sure Canadians would want to suffer to the extent the Iraqis did. But we might.

In addition, Iraq had a massive army during Saddam's reign, so there were hundreds of thousands of men with military training, and the Americans failed to secure arms depots before disbanding the Iraqi army, providing insurgents with a great deal of weaponry. Iraq also has a lot of sectarian divisions, and small scale militias. They are used to fighting. They have plenty of experience from two American invasions and the Iran-Iraq war. Canada has no such large scale equivalent military experience. 

The US would also presumably target any Canadians who are capable (and are likely) to resist, rounding them up at the beginning of hostilities. They'd have our gun registry lists.

Which brings us to Northern Ireland, and what I imagine would be the paradigm for Canadian resistance. A small number of IRA agents caused considerable headaches for the British forces, and kept Northern Ireland locked in a seemingly endless counter-insurgency campaign. It made the locals miserable, and the IRA killed a good number of their own people.

Southern Canada is mostly urbanized and settled. Running an insurgency campaign here is not likely to succeed. Partisans could theoretically operate out of the forests of the Canadian Shield, striking at US supply depots and then fading back into the wilderness. In the populated regions, I would expect most of the resistance to take the form of IEDs, bombings, kidnappings, passive resistance, sabotage, work noncompliance, and the like. 

We'd definitely have to give up our cell phones.

So it is entirely possible a small number of determined Canadians could make an American military occupation of Canada a pain in the ass. It would also last for years, if not decades, a constant stream on the evening news of bombings, riots, insurrection and civil disobedience. 

Why would any sane American government want that? Why throw away a friendship that has lasted a hundred years, just so the American flag can be planted in Ottawa? The US already HAS access to our resources. Canadian companies sell to the US all the time. Nothing is denied. Is it really over dairy tariffs? Minuscule amounts of fentanyl? The right of US banks to function here and cause a subprime crisis? 

Seriously? 

Invading Canada is a pointless, self-destructive move for the USA. 

It would create bad blood where there was none. 

Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone or something?