Well, not really,
but almost 100 years ago American military planners weren’t so sure.
You may have heard
or learned in school that Canada is the only country for which the United
States doesn’t have a standby war plan in case hostilities become imminent.
In the 1920s the
Canadian military feared that their country might become a battleground if
Britain and the United States were to escalate their competition for dominance
around the world. So, as explained in a Boston Globe book review, the Canadians
developed a plan to preemptively invade and conduct a holding operation to give
British troops time to come over and pile on.
On our side,
military planners cooked up “War Plan Red” (yeah, they did pick snazzy code
names back then) to stop Canadian invaders in their tracks.
World War II got
started a short time later and the Canadians and British and Americans found themselves
on the same side and the war plans were ultimately pigeonholed.
Now, let’s be frank:
today Canada has the world’s third-largest petroleum reserves and it has 20% of
the planet’s fresh water supply. Not insignificant treasure.
Still, I don’t think
any Americans are going to be heading to Toronto in a troop carrier any time
soon.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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