Comment by gpm
14 hours ago
The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. Nukes might fly overhead and end the world as they struck targets on either side, but other than that we were safe and any significant military action we took part in would be overseas and thus not justify calling up a huge number of reservists.
Meanwhile Norway was occupied in WWII, and after that spent the next decades next to the Soviet Union, and then Russia. There's clearly been a long standing risk of actual invasion.
> Nukes might fly overhead
Numerous Canadian sites, military and NORAD, were and surely are on first strike lists from the USSR and later Russia.
The largest established combined bi-national military command in the world involves a fair amount of shared risk.
I think "Nukes might fly overhead and end the world [...] but other than that we were safe" agrees that Canada would not thrive during a global thermonuclear war.
You very conveniently omitted the middle part of that quote: “... and end the world as they struck targets on either side”. That very clearly implies that nukes would not be targeted at Canada, which is laughably wrong. There are multiple significant military sites that are part of NORAD that would be primary targets, let alone major population centers that would be obliterated if it came to full-on Mutually-Assured-Destruction time.
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When I was in the Canadian army reserves in 1990, we were told that the operating assumption was that every population centre over 50,000 people was a primary target in a general nuclear strike, in addition to every military base or communications/logistics node.
Agreed. Also, even if Canada were to shut down all NORAD radars and command posts on Canadian territory and to kick out every US soldier and to tear up all agreements with the US, Canadian cities and important Canadian infrastructure within 100 miles of the US border (i.e., most Canadian population and infrastructure) would probably get nuked in a nuclear war just so that the US cannot rely on those resources during the US's recovery from the attack.
A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding ports is a very effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile. Military planners in the power or powers that planned the nuclear strike on the US would know that and consequently would realize that it is essential to slow down the US's recovery from the strike as long as possible.
In summary, if the US ever endures a large nuclear strike, it is very likely that Canada gets nuked, too. Canada's kicking out the US military and declaring the US to be its enemy might cause a minor reduction in intensity of the nuclear attack on Canada, but is very unlikely prevent it altogether.
Yes, Switzerland was able to avoid any attacks from the UK, the US or the USSR during WWII despite sharing a border with Germany, but that was probably near thing. Also, Switzerland was very hard for Germany to invade because of how mountainous it is; in contrast, most of the cities and infra in Southern Canada is separated from the US by nothing but plains. Also, Switzerland invests very heavily in its military capacity, e.g., every Swiss male must do military service, e.g., every bridge in Switzerland is engineered to be easy for Swiss forces to blow up.
This is counter to both SIOP and what we've found out in the Warsaw Pact archives and from researchers who have been able to interview former Soviet officers and officials.
Just a back of the napkin calculation showed how silly the idea of any conventional forces surviving a full scale nuclear war. The US had around 5K warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs at the peak of the Cold War. This doesn't even count any nuclear bombs or missiles carried by bombers. Now look at a map and count the Russian cities with a population of over 150k. In 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis), there were roughly 100 cities in the USSR at that size threshold. In a nuclear exchange, all of them are gone. Multiple times over. And most of those cities housed military forces either in them or nearby. So those are all targeted too. Every seaport, every airport, every dam, every major bridge, all targeted. The idea was to make "the rubble bounce." After a full exchange, neither the US nor the Soviets would have had anything left for a conventional conflict, with the exception of a few units that escaped the blast radius. But there would be no transport for these units, so they'd just die of starvation and disease.
> A large nuclear exchange between great powers (and currently there are 3 great powers, the US, China and Russia) would be followed by the use of conventional military forces. E.g., The US would try to capture and hold the major ports of the power or powers that attacked it because holding those ports is the most effective way of denying the power the ability to deploy its own conventional forces outside its own territory and the ability to rebuild its nuclear stockpile.
Do you have a source for that? Because that's pretty unbelievable action to take after a full nuclear exchange that leaves every major city and military base in ruins. I'd expect most if not all the US's force-projection power would be gone immediately after a nuclear war. Sure, maybe there'd be aircraft carriers out in the ocean, but with limited ability to resupply, they'd probably lose their effectiveness sooner than later.
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The problem with a large military invasion of North America would be its difficulty to disguise. There's a lot of water buffer that prevents border skirmishes from escalating with easy supply routes to keep an invasion running.
You missed an important point which is that Switzerland under the guise of neutrality helped the germans finance the war. For most of the time it very much was not in Germanys interest to invade. If their track record is anything to go by, if they had it probably wouldn't have taken them very long. Very few military lessons can be learned from the Swiss for the simple reason they have never fought in a war. As a Brit i'm obligated to point out that it's a similar story with France because they have never won a war.
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Except that there are several invasion risks, especially in the north. Canada maintains bases there (Alert) to protect its north from being taken by the likes of Russia, the USA and even Denmark (they have a longrunning dispute regarding an island near greenland). Canada also does not want the northwest passage to become an international waterway and so must maintain control over vessels in the north.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War
>> The Canadian government issued a declaration in 1986 reaffirming Canadian rights to the waters. The United States refused to recognize the Canadian claim. In 1988 the governments of Canada and the United States signed an agreement, "Arctic Cooperation," that resolved the practical issue without solving the sovereignty questions. Under the law of the sea, ships engaged in transit passage are not permitted to engage in research. The agreement states that all U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels are engaged in research, and so would require permission from the Government of Canada to pass through
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
> Denmark (they have a longrunning dispute regarding an island near greenland)
That was resolved in 2022 by dividing Hans Island. Canada now has a land border with Denmark.
outside edmonton and calgary the vast majority of the canadian population is within 100 miles of the US border. now imagine the logistics of a land invasion from northern canada. Shortest distance would be 1600 miles of wilderness. If you went from alert it would be more like 2500 miles of wilderness and several water crossings. All while you are being absolutely pummeled by US air support. It would be a suicide mission that would make the Kokoda Track campaign look like a boy scout trip.
It is such a different situation in europe. Helsinki is 100 miles from the russian border with road, highway, and rail connectivity and within reach of most of Russias air power.
I think they might legitimately be worried about an invasion from the south.
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Canada is not afraid of an invasion through the north. They fear an invasion of the north. They fear the north itself being taken, not that someone is going to drive south.
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"ending last November" - Is the implication that a Trump presidency implies a risk of invasion from the South?
Canada has relied greatly on the United States providing a blanket defense guarantee of the continent. The Canadian military is currently operationally worthless across the board, save the cyber domain. There are many reasons for it that I'm not here to list out. However, that does come with grave consequences geopolitically and the Canadian government has been living in the 1900s.
The USA, via Alaska, provides Canada against Russian provocation on the West Coast[0]. This is similar to the near constant probing of NATO states airspace, especially countries near Ukraine [1][2]
The Canadian Navy is severely underfunded (along with the rest of the Canadian Armed forces)[3] with not enough ships to actively patrol and protect it's waters, especially in the North.
The North passages are incredibly important, and will become more important as trade routes. The entirety of the US wanting to buy Greenland is as a part of having an Atlantic outpost to control those shipping lanes. Those trade lanes can be significantly shorter than routes using Suez or Panama canals.
In addition to the trade routes, the US fears a Russian and Chinese alliance because of the access that grants to the North Atlantic. Point blank: Nato cannot build ships anymore, and the PLAN capacity is staggering. This is already independent of CN and RU intelligence probing of the entirety of the west coast.
The world has changed dramatically, and the only thing that really changed in November is that the USA is no longer pretending it can defend the mainland, defend NATO countries, and police shipping lanes on their own. The USA doesn't have the capacity to replace ships, nor do they have the knowledge anymore to do so.
[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-planes-alaska-us-fighter...
[1]- https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_237721.htm
[2]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Russian_drone_incursion_i...
[3] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-greenland-panama-canal-wh...
There were literal statements of annexation. Brushed off by some "that was a joke" but they were made.
Lets not downplay that fact.
I personally can downplay them as a joke because it is a joke. The mostly likely path forward for anything like that would instead a certain oil rich province voting themselves independent and then asking the US for aid or to join.
And, if it wasn't a joke, then that's even more of a reason to consider meeting your 2% NATO agreement instead of just phoning it in.
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It's downplayable because Trump isn't actually serious about it. He's serious about something until he learns what's possible. Some things are possible (absurd tariffs), other things are not (declaring war on a bordering country).
I can't take anything you say that serious because of the rather extreme bias. 'buy Greenland" I think seize is a better word if your avoiding the term invade.
> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada.
The chance of Canada being invaded didn't change at all in November. The amount of hyperbole about Trump has been utterly astounding, and fears of an Canadian invasion are an instance of that.
And my sense is that actually a fair amount of the bad stuff Trump has done (though definitely not all) is a direct result of the overreactions to him [1], so it's probably best not to overreact.
[1] E.g. Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office to damage and destroy him. They failed, he got re-elected, and now only in his second term, he's corrupted the Justice Department into a club to attack those very same people.
In the same message you are accepting the president of the United States has corrupted the justice department into a club to attack personal enemies, and claiming people are overreacting. Don’t you see any trace of contradiction there?
And even if you don’t, does that look like a safe partner to have as a neighboring country?
> Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office
So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
That would be a valid argument if the prosecutions against Trump didn’t involve legal gymnastics like the ones Google uses to make all their profits appear to have been earned in Ireland: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...
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> So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
It's not so simple: 1) everybody breaks laws, and 2) in at least one case those laws were stretched and abused in unusual ways to specifically target him (his felony convictions, which unsurprisingly were immediately turned into an electoral attack). I'm not a Trump fan, but I'm not a Democratic partisan either, and I think that prosecution was really, really gross.
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Unfathomable that people are still downplaying the disaster trump has been at this point. Extremely sad.
Obviously the chance of invasion didn’t change in November. Trump took office in January.
The chance of invasion definitely changed then. You think the man is incapable of impulsively ordering the military to invade Canada? Or do you think the military would refuse?
You’re using the language of an abuse victim. Don’t provoke him, maybe if we’re quiet and good he’ll be nice to us. That doesn’t work. You have to get out of the abusive relationship.
The man tried to stay in office past the end of his first term with actions up to and including violence. In any sensible country he would have been thrown in prison at that point. This “don’t overreact, it just makes things worse” attitude is the only reason he’s here to fuck with us again today.
Hilariously wrong take - first, Canada does not have a chance if the US wanted to take it. Second, the US does not want to own Canada for a bunch of reasons, starting with the demographic and economic mess that Canada finds itself in.
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