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Podcast Transcript
The United States and Canada share the longest undefended border in the world. The United States and Britain have maintained a so-called “special relationship” since World War II.
The idea of these countries going to war with each other today is unthinkable.
However, this is not always the case. There was a time when this was well worth thinking about, and that time was much later than most people realize.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, learn more about the U.S./Canadian war plans and how each side developed plans to invade the other.
The idea of a war between the United States and Canada seems absurd today, and it was.
However, the relationship was never good.
To understand why, you need to understand that Canadian and British interests have been closely intertwined for most of the past 200 years. In fact, for the purposes of this episode, much of the discussion about Canada is really just a proxy for Britain.
In the last episode, I discussed when Canada became truly independent. Most Canadians will tell you that they became independent in 1867, but that date is far from certain.
Canada was not allowed to have its own military until 1899, and until 1982 every piece of legislation passed by the Canadian Parliament had to be approved by the British Parliament. Canada did not have an embassy in the United States until 1927, because before that, it was represented by Britain.
So while American independence was sudden and fitful, Canadian independence was more of a process.
So while Canada as we know it is front and center of my discussion in this episode, it’s not Canada that’s worrying, it’s the UK.
In the century following the War of 1812, Anglo-American relations, while cordial, were far from harmonious.
Britain had the largest empire in the world, and the United States was growing rapidly.
A series of skirmishes occurred in the 19th century.
The Lumberjacks’ War of 1838 and the Pig War of 1859 were two such border conflicts.
The British did not fully support the Confederacy during the Civil War, but there were some powerful factions sympathetic to them because they wanted cotton for their textile mills.
In 1866, a group of Irish-American immigrants hatched a plan to invade Canada in order to force the British to leave Ireland for ransom.
The United States turned a blind eye to this activity during the war but ended it during Grant’s administration.
By the end of the 19th century, the United States had surpassed the United Kingdom to become the world’s largest economy. They did not have a powerful army or navy, but they began to exert influence on the world stage.
events such as Venezuela Crisis of 1895 Tensions came to a head when the United States invoked the Monroe Doctrine to challenge British influence in Venezuela. Britain eventually backed down, but the incident showed how imperial ambitions could lead to friction.
None of these conflicts came seriously close to triggering war. With the advent of World War I, the two countries became close allies in the fight against Germany.
You might think that after World War I any differences between the two countries would be put aside once and for all, but that was not the case.
The first war plan between the United States and Canada was actually planned by Canada.
After the war, Britain owed the United States a huge amount of money, amounting to $22 billion. $22 billion was a lot of money at that time.
The two countries are deeply divided over payment terms, and some Canadians fear the Americans will seek payment in the form of territory.
The United States has never actually considered this, but it is the job of military planners to consider all possible scenarios.
As a result, Canadian military officer Lieutenant Colonel James Sutherland “Buster” Brown began to consider what Canada could do if it were invaded by the United States.
In 1921, Brown personally crossed the border into New York State to conduct reconnaissance, disguised himself, and conducted reconnaissance on the border area.
Most of his reconnaissance work involves buying maps at gas stations. Why he has to be in disguise, I’m really not sure, since he could just cross the border and tell everyone he meets who he is and what he’s doing and no one will really care.
After careful analysis of the situation, Lieutenant Colonel Brown formulated the so-called “Canada’s No. 1 Defense Plan.”
Brown criticized Canada’s defense: The country does not lack strategic depth.
Strategic depth is a military and geopolitical concept that refers to the distance between a country’s front lines or borders and its important centers of population, industry, and military resources.
Russia is a good example of a country with high strategic depth. When France or Germany invaded them, they could only retreat eastward, extending the enemy’s supply lines until they could regroup and counterattack.
Canada is a huge country, but nearly all of its population centers are located within a hundred miles of the U.S. border.
Russia was able to retreat to the east, but Canada was unable to retreat to the north. Beyond the great plains, they quickly move into forests and lakes, where maneuvering is difficult.
Brown realized that this lack of strategic depth meant that Canada would quickly be overwhelmed by any U.S. invasion.
To address this problem, Brown’s proposal in Defense Plan 1 was bold and simple: Canada should launch a preemptive invasion of the United States.
The goal was to disrupt U.S. forces before they could fully mobilize and invade Canada.
The plan was not to conquer the United States but to buy time for Canada to prepare its defenses and for British reinforcements to arrive, which the plan simply assumed they would arrive.
It would also give the Canadians the strategic depth they lack.
Brown proposed a five-pronged attack on the United States.
First PAW will be held in the West. Troops would march from British Columbia and attempt to capture Seattle, Spokane, and possibly Portland.
The second fork will come from either Manitoba or Saskatchewan. They would try to capture Fargo, Great Falls, and possibly even Minneapolis.
Trident would come out of Ontario and attempt to capture Detroit and Niagara.
The Quad would proceed from Quebec into upstate New York in an attempt to capture Albany.
The Pentagram would come out of New Brunswick and try to take Maine.
That would be a huge front. It was much larger than any front maintained in any war in history, as not many places on earth could have a front that long.
There are several problems with Defense Plan One. The biggest problem was that he did not consult with the British at all, and the entire plan ultimately relied on the British. The second problem was that he completely ignored the defense of important Atlantic ports such as Halifax.
Unbeknownst to Brown, in 1919, the British had made their own assessment of the conflict with the Americans and concluded that they would not fight to defend Canada. This was not important to the Empire at the time, and they considered such a conflict unwinnable.
Their report states:
…The Empire will commit itself to an unlimited land war against the United States, with the United States having all the advantages of time, distance, and supplies on its side
In 1928, the Canadian military terminated Defense Plan No. 1 and ordered the destruction of most documents.
However, this is only half the story.
In the last episode, I mentioned the Plan Dog Memo. This was a series of military plans developed by the U.S. military in the 1930s to prepare for any eventual conflict that might occur.
In that episode, I talked about the plan to eventually go to war with Germany or Japan and how that served as a plan for World War II.
However, the United States also made plans for a possible conflict with the British Empire. This was called the Red War Plan.
There is no indication that the Americans were aware of Defense Plan One. The Red War Plan was developed independently.
One possible scenario that the Americans considered was an alliance between Britain and Japan.
If conflict broke out, Americans believed Britain would seek aid from Japan and possibly Mexico.
The American plan included an invasion of Canada to deprive the British of staging areas for attacks on American soil and resources for the war effort.
The planned invasion strategy was almost a mirror image of the invasion plan Lt. Colonel Brown had developed years before. A broad front was needed to destroy Canadian cities close to the border and take advantage of what Brown recognized as a lack of strategic depth.
It also calls for the establishment of military bases along the border and the use of civilian airports for military purposes.
Unlike the Canadian plan, the American plan also has a major naval component. It assumed that British naval superiority must prevent British control of major Atlantic ports and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Americans also believed that the British would attempt to blockade New Orleans and attempt to close the Mississippi River.
Additionally, the West Coast needed to be defended from the Japanese allies as well as the Mexican border.
The Americans thought they could mobilize an army of 12 million men in 60 days. This does not include the population of approximately 110 million at that time. Twelve million was more than the entire population of Canada at the time.
One reason they believed they could mobilize so many people so quickly was that, unlike World War I, they would be fighting at home. More men would volunteer because they would be fighting to defend their homes and they could move quickly with their own transportation and, if necessary, their own weapons.
Input for the plan came from various sources, including famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. He allegedly recommended the use of chemical weapons in an invasion of Canada, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
By the late 1930s, as relations between the United States and Britain strengthened before the start of World War II, the Red War Plan became obsolete.
Canada and the United States began cooperating on mutual defense programs, such as the 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement, which established the joint defense of North America.
It was archived and forgotten until declassified in 1974.
Today, both sides view it with humor, whether it is Red War Plan or Defense Plan One.
Due to common security concerns among all countries involved, there is no reason today to believe that there is any such plan, even in theory.
After the plan was announced, it did not affect relations between the United States and Canada, as both sides realized that these were only contingency plans and that these plans were never taken seriously.
The 1995 film Canadian Bacon is a satirical comedy starring John Candy. In one, a U.S. president fabricated a conflict with Canada to boost his approval ratings.
The 1999 South Park movie also used the U.S.-Canada War as a plot device.
The idea of an American-Canadian war has now become the subject of comedy.
The US-Canada border is 8,891 kilometers or 5,525 miles long. Not only is it the longest border in the world, it’s also completely undefended.
So while the idea of a repeat of the War of 1812 is almost impossible if something were to happen, every country does have a plan that can be reworked at any time, just in case.
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