Why Canada is preparing for a (longshot) US invasion

Even if a US invasion is extremely unlikely, Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said the fact that Canadians were preparing was a sign of just how drastically the global order has shifted.

He added Canadian leaders do have hard questions to ask about how closely they want to continue working with the American military – a partnership that gives them valuable information should they want to harm Canada in any way.

“It’s really doing harm to relationships with the United States, and there’s a certain amount of legitimate fear,” he said.

Americans might not take Trump’s comments about making Canada the 51st state seriously, he said, but Canadians clearly do – and are prepared to defend themselves if needed.

So what would it be like if it happened?

The first phase of a war could be quite short.

According to the model used by the Canadian military, as reported on by the Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this year, a US attack would see Canada’s strategic positions overwhelmed within a week

Its military would quickly be outnumbered, forcing Canadian forces to resort to guerilla-type warfare to try to suppress their enemy.

Allied nations like France and Britain would be called on to provide support and defence for Canada, the newspaper reported in January, citing senior government officials.

The theoretical model is believed to be the first time in a century that Canada planned for an American assault.

The modelling is on the lighter end of military combat planning, Coates said.

He said that Canada, unlike its Nato allies, was lagging behind when it came to having a response plan in place in the event of any ground invasion, and that it was now playing catch-up in this era of unpredictable geopolitics.

Part of that, he said, was made evident by a recent call by Canada’s defence chief to drastically increase the size of its military, including the addition of as many as 300,000 lightly trained citizen soldiers.

An invasion of Canada might not be straightforward from the US point of view either.

Even with its outsized military, the US would have a difficult time getting buy-in for a fight with Canada, said Schmidt.

“I think you would have a large number of American officers who would resign if given the order to invade Canada,” he said.

“They would see it as an illegal and immoral order.”

Schmidt said Canadian soldiers and American soldiers routinely train together, and share a mutual respect.

But in the unlikely scenario that relations would deteriorate to the point of combat, Schmidt said the US would likely focus on acquiring valuable Canadian resources like oil and minerals, and political decapitation.

“You would see a a kind of operation that would mirror perhaps what you saw in Venezuela,” he said, referring to US military action earlier this year to capture former Venezuelan President Maduro.

Although he acknowledged the US has greater military capacity, he said that “pound for pound” Canadian soldiers would be able to put up a fight.