Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has confirmed that the military is running scenarios covering the possibility of a US invasion, describing it as a long shot but a necessary piece of risk management as the relationship with Washington is redefined under Donald Trump.
Carney told the New York Times that while the risk is low and the likelihood highly improbable, he has a responsibility to consider all possibilities. His remarks come after the US president’s global tariffs and his repeatedly stated desire to make Canada the 51st state.
Why Canada is planning for war
Canadian military experts quoted by the BBC think an invasion remains extremely unlikely, pointing to the depth of military cooperation between the two countries. Both are NATO members, which obliges each to defend the other in the event of an attack, and they run joint Arctic defence missions under NORAD while sharing intelligence routinely.
But Lieutenant-General Christopher Coates, who served 34 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and held senior positions including NATO missions, believes any such attack would not begin with an armed assault. He expects a more discreet route, such as cyberwarfare, would come first.
A Leger poll from January, taken after the US captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, found that more than 30% of Canadians believed a US invasion was likely.
A long history of American expansionism
Canada’s wariness is not new. Tim Foran, a researcher at the Canadian War Museum, said fear of the United States is foundational to the Canadian political project. The American army took control of Montreal in 1775 and came close to conquering Quebec City, and during the War of 1812 US forces invaded Upper Canada, Lower Canada and the maritime colonies.
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After the First World War, Canada again drew up plans for war with a resurgent United States, with army generals travelling secretly to border cities posing as tourists and photographing bridges and highways.
What an invasion could look like
Reporting by the Globe and Mail earlier this year, citing senior government officials, said Canada’s own model envisages strategic positions being overwhelmed within a week, with Canadian forces switching to guerrilla-style warfare and allies including Britain and France being called on for support. The model is believed to be the first in a century to plan for an American assault.
Coates said Canada had lagged behind its NATO allies in having a ground invasion response plan in place and is now playing catch-up. That is visible in the defence chief’s call for up to 300,000 lightly trained citizen soldiers.
Matthew Schmidt, of the University of New Haven, said Americans may not take the 51st state comments seriously, but Canadians clearly do, and added that a large number of US officers would resign rather than carry out such an order.
Why it matters
For Britain, this is a NATO alliance stress test rather than a distant curiosity. Canada is a Nato ally and a former colonial tie with deep economic integration with the UK. If Washington’s economic coercion of Ottawa escalated into anything more serious, London would be pulled in through Article 5 of the NATO treaty. It also underlines how far the transatlantic relationship has shifted from the post-war consensus.
What happens next
Ottawa is expected to continue building out its response plans and its recruitment surge, with the defence establishment pushing for a significant increase in personnel. Meanwhile the trade relationship remains the live front, and the White House continues to insist that its policies are protective of Canada. Analysts expect the military planning to stay in place as long as the rhetoric from Washington persists.
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