The Plans for a US/Canadian War

Podcast Transcript

The United States and Canada share the world’s longest undefended border. The United States and the United Kingdom have shared what has been called a “special relationship” since the Second World War.

The idea of these countries going to war with each other today is unthinkable.

Yet, this was not always the case. There was a time when this was very thinkable, and that time was far more recent than most people realize.

Learn more about the planning for a US/Canadian war and how both sides made plans to invade the other on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The idea of a war between the United States and Canada seems ridiculous today, and it is.

However, relations were always not so good.

To understand why, you need to understand that for much of the last 200 years, Canada’s and Britain’s interests have been very intertwined. In fact, for the purpose of this episode, much of the talk about Canada is really just a proxy for Britain.

In a previous episode, I discussed when Canada truly became independent. Most Canadians will tell you that they became independent in 1867, but that date is far from cut and dry.

Canada wasn’t allowed to have its own military until 1899, and every piece of legislation passed by the Canadian parliament had to be approved by the British parliament up to 1982. Canada didn’t even have an embassy in the United States until 1927 as it was represented by the UK until then.

So, while American independence was sudden and cut and dry, Canadian independence was more of a process.

So, while the land we know as Canada is very much front and center of what I’ll be talking about in this episode, the concern wasn’t Canada so much as it was Great Britain.

British-American relations were cordial but far from harmonious in the century after the War of 1812.

The British had the biggest empire in the world, and the United States was rapidly growing.

There were a series of small skirmishes that took place in the 19th century.

The Lumberjack War of 1838 and the Pig War of 1859 were two such border skirmishes.

Britain didn’t outright support the Confederacy during the Civil War, but there were powerful factions who sympathized with them because they wanted cotton for their textile mills.

In 1866, a group of Irish-American Immigrants hatched a plan to invade Canada with the intent of holding it ransom to get the British to leave Ireland.

The US turned a blind eye to this activity during the war but ended it during the Grant administration.

By the late 19th century, the United States had overtaken the United Kingdom as the world’s largest economy. They didn’t have a powerful army or navy, but they were starting to exert influence on the world stage.

Events such as the Venezuelan Crisis of 1895 brought tensions to a peak when the U.S. invoked the Monroe Doctrine to challenge British influence in Venezuela. Britain ultimately backed down, but the incident showcased how imperial ambitions could lead to friction.

None of these conflicts ever came seriously close to starting a war. With the advent of World War I, the two countries were close allies in the fight against Germany.

You’d think that after the First World War, whatever differences the two countries had would be put aside once and for all, but that was not the case.

The first plan for a war between the United States and Canada was actually hatched by Canada.

After the war, Britain owed the United States a tremendous amount of money, $22 billion dollars. That was back when $22 billion dollars was a lot of money.

The two countries had serious disagreements as to the payment terms, and there were concerns amongst some Canadians that the Americans would seek payment in the form of territory.

This wasn’t actually ever considered by the United States, but it is the job of military planners to consider all eventualities.

So one 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 conducted reconnaissance by crossing the border into New York State, donning a disguise, and scouting the area across the border.

Much of his scouting consisted of buying maps at gas stations. Why he had to wear a disguise, I’m really not sure because he could have crossed the border and told everyone he met exactly who he was and what he was doing, and no one would have really cared.

After a careful analysis of the situation, Lieutenant Colonel Brown created what was known as Canadian Defence Scheme No. 1.

Brown made a critical observation with regard to Canada’s defense: the country lacked no strategic depth.

Strategic depth is a military and geopolitical concept referring to the distance between a nation’s front lines or borders and its vital centers of population, industry, and military resources.

A good example of a country with a lot of strategic depth is Russia. When France or Germany invaded them, they were able just to retreat eastward, extending the enemy’s supply lines until they could regroup and counter attack.

Canada is an enormous country, but almost all of the population centers lie within a hundred miles of the US border.

Whereas Russia was able to retreat to the east, Canada can’t retreat to the north. Other than in the Great Plains, they quickly run into forests and lakes, which are difficult to maneuver in.

Brown realized that this lack of strategic depth meant that Canada would be overwhelmed quickly by any American invasion.

To solve this problem, Brown’s recommendation in Defence Scheme No. 1 was audacious and simple: Canada should conduct a preemptive invasion of the United States.

The goal would be to disrupt American forces before they could fully mobilize and invade Canada.

The plan was not to conquer the U.S. but to buy time for Canada to prepare its defenses and for British reinforcements to arrive, which the plan just assumed that they would.

It would also buy the Canadians the strategic depth that they lacked.

Brown proposed a five-pronged attack on the United States.

Prong one would take place in the West. Forces would come out of British Columbia and attempt to seize Seattle, Spokane, and possibly Portland.

Prong two would come out of Manitoba or Saskatchewan. They would attempt to take Fargo, Great Falls, and possibly Minneapolis.

Prong three would come out of Ontario and try to take Detroit and Niagara.

Prong four would come out of Quebec and into upstate New York to try and take Albany.

Prong five would come out of New Brunswick and try to take Maine.

That would be an enormous front. It would be far larger than any front maintained in any war in history simply because there aren’t many places on Earth where you can have a front that long.

There were several problems with Defence Scheme No. 1. The biggest of which was that he in no way consulted with the British, on whom the entire plan ultimately relied. The second problem was that he totally ignored the defense of important Atlantic ports such as Halifax.

What Brown didn’t know was that in 1919, the British conducted their own assessment of a conflict with the Americans and concluded that they would not fight to defend Canada. It wasn’t considered vital to the empire at that point, and moreover, they believed such a conflict to be unwinnable.

Their report noted:

…the Empire would be committed to an unlimited land war against the U.S.A., with all advantages of time, distance, and supply on the side of the U.S.A.

In 1928, the Canadian military put an end to Defence Scheme No. 1 and ordered most of the documents destroyed.

However, this is only half the story.

In a previous episode, I mentioned the Plan Dog Memorandum. This was a series of military plans that the American military created in the 1930s to prepare for any eventual conflicts that might arise.

In that episode, I spoke about the plans for an eventual war with Germany or Japan and how it served as planning for the Second World War.

However, the US also created a plan for a possible conflict with the British Empire. This became known as War Plan Red.

There is no indication that the Americans were aware of Defence Scheme No. 1. War Plan Red was developed independently.

One possible scenario that the Americans considered was an alliance between the British and the Japanese.

If a conflict were to break out, then the Americans assumed that the British would seek the aid of Japan and possibly Mexico.

The American plans involved an invasion of Canada to deny the British a staging location for attacks on American territory as well as resources for their war effort.

The plan invasion strategy was almost a mirror of the invasion plan developed by Lieutenant Colonel Brown years earlier. A broad front was needed to take out Canadian cities close to the border and take advantage of the lack of strategic depth that Brown had recognized.

It also called for creating military bases along the border and using civilian airfields for military purposes.

Unlike the Canadian plan, the American plan had a major naval component as well. It assumed that the British Navy was superior and that it had to stop the British from controlling major Atlantic ports and the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

The Americans also assumed that the British would try to blockade New Orleans and try to shut down the Mississippi River.

In addition, it would require defense of the West Coast from Japanese allies as well as the Mexican border.

The Americans assumed they could mobile an army of 12 million men in a matter of 60 days. This was out of a population of about 110 million at the time. Twelve million was more than the entire population of Canada at the time.

One reason why they believed they could mobilize so many so quickly is because, unlike the First World War, they would be fighting at home. Many more men would volunteer because they would be fighting to defend their home and they could move quickly with their own transportation, and if need be, their own weapons.

Input on the plan came from a wide variety of sources, including the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. Supposedly, he recommended the use of chemical weapons, which were in violation of the Geneva Convention, in an invasion of Canada.

By the late 1930s, War Plan Red was rendered obsolete as American and British relations strengthened before the start of the Second World War.

Canada and the U.S. began collaborating on mutual defense plans, such as the Ogdensburg Agreement of 1940, which established the joint defense of North America.

It was filed away and forgotten until it was declassified in 1974.

Today, both War Plan Red and Defence Scheme No. 1 are looked at with humor on both sides.

There is no reason to believe there are any such plans today, even theoretically, because of the joint security concerns of all countries involved.

When the plans were released, it didn’t impact relations between the United States and Canada as both sides realized it was just contingency planning and the plans were never taken seriously.

The 1995 movie Canadian Bacon is a satirical comedy starring John Candy. In it, a U.S. president fabricates a conflict with Canada to boost his approval ratings.

The 1999 South Park movie also uses an American-Canadian war as a plot device.

The idea of an American-Candian War is now the subject of comedy.

The US-Canadian border is 8,891 kilometers or 5,525 miles long. It is not only the longest border in the world, but it is also totally undefended.

So, while the idea of a rematch of the War of 1812 is almost impossible if something should ever happen, each country does have a plan that they could always dust off just in case.