U.S. could easily invade Canada, experts agree, but would face decades of resistance

If U.S. President Donald Trump fails in his stated goal of annexing Canada through economic force, what would happen if he ordered the world’s most powerful military to invade? Some experts and academics say it’s a notion too preposterous to even contemplate.

But Aisha Ahmad isn’t one of them. “When you look at the power (imbalance) between the U.S.



and Canada, an invasion would immediately result in the defeat of the Canadian Armed Forces,” said the University of Toronto political science professor, who last month published an essay on the subject in The Conversation. “But a conventional military victory is not the end of this story. It’s just the beginning.

” Trump started openly musing about making Canada the 51st state in December, and on Jan. 7 he said the United States might use the military to seize control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. When asked that day if he would use military force to annex Canada, he said: “No, economic force.

” The incendiary comments left Canadians wondering just how far Trump would go to achieve such an audacious power grab. Ahmad, who has studied insurgencies for more than 20 years, says that if the United States were “reckless” enough to invade its northern neighbour, a violent repression of the Canadian population would herald the beginning of a decades-long resistance. “It’s impossible to annex Canada without violence,” said Ahmad, who has advised generals at the Pentagon about counter-insurgency strategies.

“No one is born an insurgent or resistance fighter. This is something that happens to people when their mom is killed, or when their kids are unable to get to a hospital. People fight back because they have to.

” Ahmad said otherwise ordinary citizens would start engaging in mild civil disobedience — cutting wires, diverting funds, thwarting the occupiers in small ways. Others would escalate to sabotage, ambushes and raids, sowing disorder and slowly draining the invading army of its energy and resources. Neighbours would provide the insurgents with safe havens, allowing them to fade back into the population.

“The research on guerrilla wars clearly shows that weaker parties can use unconventional methods to cripple a more powerful enemy over many years,” Ahmad wrote in The Conversation. “This approach treats waging war as a secret, part-time job that an ordinary person can do ..

.. Trump is delusional if he believes that 40 million Canadians will passively accept conquest.

”.