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.
No comments:
Post a Comment