As United States President Donald Trump relentlessly threatens to annex Canada, some Canadians are worried that an American invasion could one day become a reality.
How would that scenario play out? Looking at the sheer size of the American military, many people might believe that Trump would enjoy an easy victory.
That analysis is wrong. If Trump ever decides to use military force to annex Canada, the result would not be determined by a conventional military confrontation between the Canadian and American armies. Rather, a military invasion of Canada would trigger a decades-long violent resistance, which would ultimately destroy the United States.
But in this nightmare scenario, could Canadians successfully resist an American invasion? Absolutely. I know this because I have studied insurgencies around the world for more than two decades, and I have spent time with ordinary people who have fought against powerful invading armies.
Read more: Attempting to annex Canada would spell disaster for the U.S. at home and abroad
How insurgencies begin
The research on guerrilla wars clearly shows that weaker parties can use unconventional methods to cripple a more powerful enemy over many years. This approach treats waging war as a secret, part-time job that an ordinary person can do.
Guerrillas use ambushes, raids and surprise attacks to slowly bleed an invading army, and local communities support these fighters by giving them safe havens and material support. These supporting citizens can also engage in forms of “everyday resistance,” using millions of passive-aggressive episodes of sabotage to frustrate and drain the enemy.
Trump is delusional if he believes that 40 million Canadians will passively accept conquest without resistance. There is no political party or leader willing to relinquish Canadian sovereignty over “economic coercion,” and so if the U.S. wanted to annex Canada, it would have to invade.
That decision would set in motion an unstoppable cycle of violence. Even if we imagine a scenario in which the Canadian government unconditionally surrenders, a fight would ensue on the streets. A teenager might throw a rock at invading soldiers. That kid would get shot, and then there would be more rocks, and more gunfire. An insurgency would be inevitable.
The myth of Canadian ‘niceness’
This idea may shock Canadians today because they see themselves as friendly and affable people. However, Canada’s current self-image of “niceness” only exists because they’re at peace. War changes people very quickly, and Canadians are no more innately peaceful than any other human beings.
When your child is dying in your arms, you become capable of violence. Once you lose what you love, resistance becomes as natural as breathing.
Except for a few collaborators and kapos, my research suggests many Canadians would likely engage in various forms of everyday resistance against invading forces that could involve steal, lying, cutting wires and diverting funds.
Meanwhile, the insurgents would unleash physical devastation on American targets. Even if one per cent of all resisting Canadians engaged in armed insurrection, that would constitute a 400,000-person insurgency, nearly 10 times the size of Taliban at the start of the Afghan war. If a fraction of that number engaged in violent attacks, it would set fire to the entire continent.
Canada’s geography would make this insurgency difficult to defeat. With deep forests and rugged mountains, Canada’s northern terrain could not be conquered or controlled. That means loyalists from the Canadian Armed Forces could mobilize civilian recruits into decentralized fighting units that could strike, retreat into the wilderness and blend back into the local communities that support them.
The Canada-U.S. border is also easy to cross, which would give insurgents access to American critical infrastructure. It costs tens of billions of dollars to build an energy pipeline, and only a few thousand to blow one up.
What about American air strikes?
But wouldn’t the Americans crush the rebellion with missiles and drone strikes? They would try, but that approach to counterinsurgency won’t work.
In fact, it is a well-known booby trap of insurgent warfare. The harder more powerful nations strike, the larger and more fragmented the insurgency becomes, making it impossible to achieve either a military victory or negotiated agreement. Canada’s rugged terrain would protect insurgents from those types of attacks, while global outrage at the bombings would only boost support for the rebellion.
Americans have already been defeated by insurgents in many parts of the world because they could not escape this trap. If they dare to invade Canada, they would create this unsolvable security problem on their own soil.
Russia and China rise to power
How could Canadians pay for this decades-long insurgency? The answer lies in every single historical example of the old adage: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The prospect of Americans becoming trapped by an insurgency on their own continent would delight Moscow and Beijing, which could easily establish covert northern passages to send weapons to the insurgency. Financing an insurgency is an effective way to ensnare and bankrupt a rival power, as counter-insurgency operations are exponentially more expensive than the price of a few arms shipments.
A chronic violent insurrection in North America could financially and militarily pin down the U.S. for decades, ultimately triggering economic and political collapse. Russia and China, meantime, would enjoy an uncontested rise to power.
Forewarned
This scenario would guarantee the destruction of both Canada and the United States. No one in their right mind would choose this gruesome future over a peaceful and mutually beneficial alliance with a friendly neighbour.
Nevertheless, if Trump is reckless enough to think the violent annexation of Canada is an achievable goal, then let it be known that all these horrifying outcomes were predictable well in advance, and that he was forewarned.
Aisha Ahmad has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
