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American Civil War—bad.
Captain America: Civil War—good.
War star-ting—bad.
Star Wars—good.
War of the Worlds—bad.
World War—go… wait, no.
No War—good, for most.
One of the few downsides for a lack of war is that there’s not much for generals and
the like to do so they need activities to fill their time.
One such activity is planning for war.
After all, the US for example, has only been at war for 224 years of its 243 year existence—a
measly 92%.
That’s a lot of downtime.
During the 20’s, there wasn’t much war stuff going on—only this small four decade-long
war in central America where the US was fighting to be sure the bananas kept flowing—and
so in order to prepare for a possible Great War part deux the US started making plans
for what their strategy would be for hypothetical wars with possible contenders like Japan,
China, Mexico, and the UK.
Now, despite their very public break-up in the late 1700’s, relations between the US
and UK mostly improved up until World War One when relations improved greatly after
the US did Europe a solid by rocking up in the forth quarter and helping finish the job.
Nonetheless, Britain was still a big scary empire—by some measures still the most powerful
nation in the world—so the US still prepared a plan in the 30’s for war with the red
coats.
It was called War Plan Red and the idea was as follows.
Of course, after the US quite boisterously declared itself as not part of the UK in the
1700s, one of the not-quite-united States of America, that is, Canada, remained part
of the British empire.
By the 1900s, Canada was independent but still very much integrated in the commonwealth and
it had some fancy features like a 5,500 mile, 9,000 kilometer border with the home team
in this hypothetical UK-US war.
It was therefore believed that the UK would use Canada as a jumping-off point for an invasion
of the mainland US so the idea was for the US military to yankee doodle doo its way up
into Canada before the British could arrive.
There were five main areas that the US would invade—Halifax and St. John, Montreal and
Quebec city, the Great Lakes area, Winnipeg, and Vancouver.
Step one was to launch an offensive towards Halifax by land and sea.
Halifax was a crucial port for British-Canadian trade and therefore occupying it would greatly
slow down the movement of British forces into Canada.
From there, a land assault from New York and Vermont would be launched to occupy Montreal
and Quebec City.
These act as major ports on the St Lawrence River and controlling the St Lawrence would
essentially split Canada in two preventing goods from the agricultural areas in the Maritimes
from getting to the rest.
The US would also seek to control the Great Lakes area around Toronto both because this
area was and is one of Canada’s major population and industrial centers and because it’s
dangerously close to the American midwest which, at the time, was a crucial industrial
area of the US.
They didn’t want the British to be able to set up bases here.
Winnipeg was next on US’ wish list largely because it acted as the center of Canada’s
trans-continental railroad so controlling Winnipeg would mean controlling and cutting
off rail transportation.
Lastly, Vancouver, while lower importance, was included in invasion plans to prevent
Britain using it as a back-up port by going through the Panama Canal and in order to disrupt
Canada’s pacific trade.
It was believed that if the US controlled these five areas, they would effectively control
Canada and this would be a significant enough blow that the UK would seek a peace deal—no
conflict outside the western hemisphere was planned.
Interestingly, this plan included a short little casual little line mentioning that
the US had no intention of returning the captured territory.
Canada would become part of the US.
Who knows, maybe they have oil or something well that sure would be convenient, hahahahaha-please-give-us-oil.
That being their worst nightmare, Canada developed their own war plan against the United States.
They recognized that their own military alone did not have a great chance at defending their
territory against the US long-term.
The general idea was therefore to distract US forces by, as soon as credible intelligence
about an impending US invasion was received, launching a surprise invasion on Seattle,
Spokane, Portland, Fargo, Great Falls, Minneapolis, Albany, and Maine.
Eventually, as American forces arrived to defend these cities the Canadians would retreat
destroying infrastructure like bridges, roads, and railroads on their way back to slow an
American invasion.
Hopefully, according to the Canadian plan, by this time British troops would have arrived
from the UK.
Now, while they were far from the most credible threat to the US, some people really believed
in the 30s that war with the British empire could happen.
Today, any sort of conflict between the US and UK or Canada—two of the most culturally
and economically linked countries to the US—seems ridiculous although, War Plan Red, the US’
plan, was only declassified in 1974.
The US won’t acknowledge whether or not there’s a modern day equivalent.
As far as we know, the American military could be prepping for war with the UK right now.
Of course, what we can be pretty certain of is that if the US and UK go to war, the missiles’ll
be flying!
In the post-war apocalyptic nuclear wasteland you’ll want to re-build your social status
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