World News

24596 readers

59 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

The US drew up a plan to invade Canada in 1930. Now Trump is reviving old fears (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

First, American forces would strike with poison gas munitions, seizing a strategically valuable port city. Soldiers would sever undersea cables, destroy bridges and rail lines to paralyze infrastructure. Major cities on the shores of lakes and rivers would be captured in order to blunt any civilian resistance.

The multipronged invasion would rely on ground forces, amphibious landing and then mass internments. According to the architects of the plan, the attack would be short-lived and the besieged country would fall within days.

The target was Canada, part of a classified 1930 strategy – War Plan Red – for a hypothetical war with Great Britain where the US would seek to deny it any foothold in North America. A collaged artwork of Trump wearing a Maga hat and medals, standing in front of the Capitol building with helicopters and fighter jets flying in the background. The image has been designed to look like an oil painting.

But the invasion plans, once dismissed as a fumbling historical quirk, have taken on fresh relevance as the US pivots its foreign policy to an increasingly aggressive view of its “pre-eminence” in the western hemisphere and turns its sights on both foes and allies.

top 5 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] SageMountain@beehaw.org 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the attack would be short-lived and the besieged country would fall within days.

They said the same thing about the civil war

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

They say the same thing about every war they lost since ww2

[–] Megaman_EXE@beehaw.org 6 points 3 months ago

I can't imagine all Americans would be ok with invading Canada. They would meet resistance within and from Canadians. I find it hard to imagine how it would go, but it wouldnt be smooth

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

I don’t think that old plan would work today. Take severing undersea cables. Some of the major Pacific undersea cables terminate in Vancouver, serving the entire Pacific Northwest. Severing them seriously degrades communications throughout northwestern US while not disconnecting Vancouver from the rest of Canada, or the world at large.

Not to mention: how exactly would the military hold these strategic cities? The majority of important/export from the port cities is already to the US. If they tried something like this, Canadians would just go on a general strike and the US would be severely impacted.

That’s assuming of course that NATO ignored the situation and China didn’t take the opportunity to invade Taiwan and Japan.

[–] RivverRavven@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago

Even if the US invaded, they'd face guerilla warfare like they've never seen before. Over 5 million Canadians - including indigenous Canadians who knows how to live in the forests - and like it or not, there are millions of guns in Canadian hands.

The US would be fighting a second Vietnam, a second Afghanistan, and a second Iraq at the same time.