Thus far, Trump has not raised the possibility of sending actual troops to Ontario. Instead, he seems to believe he can achieve this Canadian Anschluss by simply crushing Canada’s economy and leaving it no choice but to join the US.
But Canada in 2025 is not Austria in 1938. “Canada will never, ever be part of America,” declared newly elected Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney last week, making the country’s position crystal clear. And, last month, the Canadian Armed Forces announced that after years of declining enrollment, it had seen a surge in enlistments since Trump took office, with about 1,000 more applicants than last year. (Canadian officials couldn’t attribute the new rash of interest to Trump’s threats, but they didn’t rule it out, either.)
Given that Canada will never voluntarily join the US—which it is adamant about—would Trump try to use force to annex it? And would Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth go along with this crazy plan?
What do you mean “IF” ?? There is no IF He just hasn’t figured out how to succeed and get away with it. As soon as he has the answer to that…
I’d bet a significant enough chunk of the US military is against annexation and would resist orders to invade. Canada and US have basically been brothers in arms for 100+ years, thats a hard culture to throw away for no real threat. The average US infantry is not going to feel like they are fighting for freedom by annexing Canada.
Just like they were “fighting for freedom” by invading Iraq, a country that didn’t have shit to do with the 9/11 attack or anything else going on at home at the time? Even after it was known they lied about “weapons of mass destruction”, people still signed up to be sent over there.
They just need to find the right kind of propaganda to justify going into Canada, and then the meatheads will follow.
They don’t even need that much propaganda. I remember soldiers pumping “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” as a war anthem in Iraq. We have enough stupid shit in our “culture” to help justify it anyway. Just look at the pointless lyrics to that stupid fucking song that basically mean nothing yet somehow couldn’t be more on the nose if it tried.
You wanted in and now you’re here
Driven by hate, consumed by fear
Sounds like every idiot asshole that signed up to kill innocent Iraqis and yet they used it as a war anthem for… killing innocent Iraqis. Fuck me I hate living in this stupid ass country.
EDIT: Also check the YouTube comments for that fucking video, plenty of people still love it.
Iraq wasn’t their neighbor, the average american had rarely met or interacted with an Iraqi IRL or online. The same is not true for Canada. Our cultures and demographics are far more similar. It isn’t impossible but the propaganda would have to be quite impressive to shift the overall attitude towards Canadians.
Iraq is a country far far away that most Americans have never visited. Plus Saddam was a real criminal who attacked his own people with chemical weapons. That makes it easy for an average American to believe the false claims.
Canada is right across the border. So many Americans have been there. many have wives and husbands from there. They are a democracy. no mass killing or genocides. Besides Trump is not even accusing them of anything. He just want to take it “for national security”
The two situations are not the same.
Agreed, the number of refusals, defections, and just straight up surrendering would cause massive problems for any sort of invasion.
Not to mention the basic fact that there’s nothing to “capture” these days.
If they take the government buildings by force, does that change anything?
They’ve only “taken” Canada if the people start paying taxes to the US government, and that’s unlikely to happen in an invasion situation. People would just stop paying their taxes entirely. It’s not like troops could go door to door collecting, they may be able to collect it from some specific large businesses, but the rest of the economy immediately goes underground
There’s no reasonable enforcement measure for the mass riots that would occur with the number of troops they could afford to deploy to Canada. If they start ordering troops to just gun down every riot, the fight back from the Canadians is going to make Afghanistan look like a cake walk.
If they start shutting down basic functions like electricity or banking to control the population, then the number of guns Canada owns is going to become a huge problem for the troops they have here. The US military would also have to secure the border somehow as some people will try to flee into the US, and some of those people “fleeing” would then turn around and start attacking US assets in the US.
And that’s not to mention the almost million Canadians who currently live in the US, are they going to try Japanese internment camps again?
A physical invasion is just completely infeasible. He’s going to keep pushing it economically and politically, and it’s very likely he’s long gone (either out of office or dead) before Canada would cave to those pressures.
Plenty of the US military seems to adore Trump whatever he proposes.
Canadian polls are rising too.
Don’t discount the effect of propaganda, and of decision makers in Washington drinking some of their own kool-aid.
Do you have a link to the Canadian polls? I’m looking on my own but I’m an analyst by both trade and inclination and I’d like to see that data.
As an American even I don’t have that faith in our military to do the right thing.
There’s a good chunk of them that are indoctrinated in MAGA philosophies, and they are trained to follow orders. More likely that the pushback would come from leadership, however I certainly would not want to test it.
In this situation, they would be court marshaled, so they have to follow orders here.
It would honestly take just a single brave “bodyguard” to end this all. Even if they are killed or jailed, it sure as shit beats having to die in combat while fighting an innocent neighbour because you followed orders from a clown.
On the upside, they’d be a global hero for preventing a needless war. No need to go back in time to drop an orange down a flight of stairs, either.
The officers issue orders, and the officers mostly hate Trump. The enlisted people are far more pro-Trump than the people who issue orders. They take an oath to protect the people under their command AND an oath to protect the Constitution, and they take those oaths very seriously. They hate that Trump shits all over those people and shits all over the Constitution.
They will follow orders from Trump when there isn’t much at stake or if they align with their mission of protecting the United States and its allies/interests. I think you would see mass resignations on the officer side of the military if they were commanded by Trump to attack Canada. They might not refuse to follow an order, but they might resign or force a reassignment to a post that is not involved with the attack on Canada.
Yeah, lets see how many of them refuse to invade Canada after the first few dozen get executed in front of everyone else.
The world knows that leadership style already. It’s the secret ingredient of the legendary russian army that allowed them to take Ukraine in 5 days.
They’ve already been firing generals that won’t toe the line. They’re in the process of ridding the military of trans soldiers. Gay/Lesbian soldiers will probably be next, and I don’t doubt there will soon be incentives to rat out any fellow soldiers who are suspected of not being “Loyal Americans”.
Ukraine and Russia have been brothers in arms for a thousand years and I thought the current war was impossible, but here we are.
90% the things Trump suggests are not something he actually does. The trouble is you’re never sure which 10% are what he will do
He floods the zone with so much intentionally that it all looks like noise. Don’t get twisted by it all. It’s designed to make you numb and assume he is more powerful than he is. He’s done that this term and he did it during his first term
Follow his direct actions more than his words. Based on actions, I’d actually be a bit more alarmed for Panama invasion than Canada right now. He directed military to create plans for that. Watch it more closely
I think we left What If long ago.
True, but I worry that only very left individuals are really talking about this probability. In the big picture, centrists and right wingers don’t believe it will happen. Mother Jones is left, but it’s also a large media company. If we can get more media companies to report on what we think is obvious, it will force the centrists and “I don’t do politics” people to hear it. I hope this article is the start of the discussion in the media, which will take time to happen, unfortunately.
I’m pretty sure we’ve all figured out our own personal insurrection style already.
Mine is penises in the dead mouth like the Viet Cong did. And blowing up Americans.
There’s no “what if he’s serious” here, the rest of the world with half a brain saw it already.
Send rump up here to Canada. We’ll take care of the problem that muricans cannot
Everything he says, he’s serious about. Annexing Canada, Greenland, Panama canal, tariffs, not leaving office (currently floated as running for another term after this one), getting revenge on all his enemies, etc etc. All of it. How much of it he can actually do is however much he isn’t stopped from doing.
Would he order use of force? I don’t know. But the question isn’t whether Hegseth would go along with it–of course he would. The question is how many American troops would follow the orders. IMO many or most would refuse. They (and the US populace) would view using military force against Canada in the same way they would view using military force against American citizens (which I would not be surprised to be ordered at some point). Other than a few hardcore magats, I believe we would never go along with a war against our Canadian cousins.
