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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

How? What if we just decide we will never go to war with Mexico or Canada and get comfortable with the idea of importing from our allies? There is no serious future risk from doing that

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> if we just decide we will never go to war with...

That's hubris. Although the US does indulge elective wars, one does not always get to choose with whom one will war.

Okay so make a prediction. What is the probability that Canada or Mexico will declare war on the United States in the next 100 years?

100 years? Only a fool would attempt that. 100 years from now Uzbekistan could be fighting Brazil in orbit around Venus.

100 years ago the British Empire ruled the world, now it's a small island you don't hear much about... The US is only about 250 years old, I'd be cautious about predicting the future

You're off by about 150 years. 100 years ago was 1925, the British has already largely collapsed losing the US, Canada, Australia. 100 years isn't forever but it's a long time

And we haven't had any serious threats from Canada since 1812. I think the most reasonable estimate is 100-200 years

Surely based on history the odds of a conflict between neighbouring countries increases with time passed.

No, based on the history of conflict we can say that the more time that passes with neighbors not invading one another, the less likely they will in the future

~1920 is the peak of the British Empire in term of territory, anyways, the details are meaningless, what matters is that things move fast and just because you're at the top of your game right now doesn't mean you'll be in the same position in 100 years

I could also take the example of world wars, in France ww1 was deemed "la der des ders", which meant "the very last war" or "the war to end all wars", well 20 years later we were at it again

Or simply look at China, you don't even have to go back 100 years in the past to see drastic changes.

That's only the case if you include Canada and Australia, which were functionally independent at that point.

I'm not claiming nobody will invade France or Taiwan in the next 100 years, I'm claiming that the US is special. We haven't been invaded since 1812 and haven't really been attacked since 1941. It's reasonable to predict we won't be invaded or go to war with our neighbors for 100 years since it hasn't happened for 213 years

This strikes me as hubris in the extreme.

My own death has not yet been a problem for me, but I can safely assume it will be.

Because everyone dies. If everyone lived to be 1000 you'd be wrong to worry about dying in 100 years

It sounds like you’re making the assumption that things will remain static because the alternative is unfathomable to even consider.

Definitely non-zero. If you were Mexican or Canadian you would not take the bet on even 20 years right now so who would bet on 100?

If we include the idea that either one of them is allied to a major power at war with the US over a hundred year horizon, right now that looks pretty likely, and arguably is one of the things the current US admin are trying to stop before it becomes inevitable.

The US admin is very clearly pushing us in the opposite direction. You believe that Trump's actions make war with Canada less likely? What's the mechanistic explanation?

This is the wildest interpretation I've ever heard about what's going on right now. Maybe look up the term "soft power" and why it works.

Didn't the US join 2 world wars it did not start (or was involved in starting) in the last ~100 years?

Not against our neighbors

So the argument is that the neighbors will never ally and be involved in a war that puts US on the opposite side? What is the argument for the sovereign neighbors to always be neutral or on US side come what may?

The fact that they're much smaller than the US and right there. Both would have their key cities flattened within 30 days.

Yes, that's right. This has been the case for over 200 years so I think it's reasonable it will continue to be true for at least another 100

Germany was trying to get Mexico to join them for wwi, with enticement of getting back the land they lost 70 years prior. That loss was immense for Mexico in land, pride, and economics

Mexico was dealing with its own internal issues (revolution) which made it difficult for them

A slight turn of events and the us would have a huge southern front I deal with, and a base of support for disaffected native Americans and African Americans.

Russia also dropped out of Wwi due to its intern revolution

It is easy to look back and see manifest destiny as a given. There were a lot of contingencies

If the US didn't enter WW2, we would have new neighbors. The technology has made the world a small neighborhood.

Mexican warlords (which we colloquially call "cartels") are fighting a small war with the US right now and have been for many years.

What does that mean? No they aren't? When is the last time cartels attacked the American military?

You understand that for basically every violent entity in the world (except China and Russia), avoiding the US Mil is their best path to success and continued survival?

"War" as a concept does not have to include two militaries fighting each other.

If the cartels are waging a war against the US, so is a large number of American oligarchs. When will they start being on the receiving end of drone strikes and special operations?

When you stretch the definition of war to absurdity, so can I.

It's an extension of a peace through strength philosophy. If you lose your critical sovereign capabilities you become weak and vulnerable. You no longer get to decide who you do and don't "never go to war with".

Yes I understand the reasoning, it's just obviously wrong. This doesn't happen and hasn't happened in hundreds of years. This is not why people get invaded, otherwise Switzerland would have been invaded many times over the last century

That's exactly why Switzerland didn't got invaded in the last century. Every side depended on them for money supply, so they couldn't risk bringing the war to Switzerland. Also it had a track record of staying neutral, so they didn't feared it may pick a side, because it largely made money from selling stuff from both sides.

This kind of answers your own question: the reality is you are only a reliable US ally [1] if you can hold them by the balls TSMC style. Given that countries go to great lengths to develop and maintain such dependencies. Canada's current weakness is at least in part because it has failed to do so.

[1] Edit to add: This was/is poorly worded - I mean that the US will only guarantee that you remain an ally while they are in some sense dependent on you, and while doing so they may work to break that dependence, which you may interpret as them trying to abandon you.

You are claiming that Canada will stop exporting to the US in the future? Populism does the opposite, they would likely stop importing. There's almost no risk to us that they would not export chips

My claim is Canada has no unique product that it offers that the US is sufficiently conspicuously dependent on for it to guarantee any real sense of true independence, and so it finds itself subject to the whims of a foreign state.

Right now there is a very large Canadian boycott of US products, services and tourism. I also had to explain to a client this week that because of the import tariffs on Chinese goods to the US the US assembled products are now no longer competitive with alternatives. The fact you were seemingly unaware of this kind of demonstrates the level of effect of it.

You are arguing my point. Canada may stop importing from us but will never stop exporting. There are no incentives for that and never will be.

We import tons of food and energy from them and have no alternative on time scales or 10 years

If we imported chips from Canada, that supply chain would be safe for at least 50 years, probably hundreds

The Nintendo Wii SoC was actually fabbed in Canada and exported, but that facility has changed into something slightly different because the whole east coast/hudson river valley fab world went sideways a while ago.

> We import tons of food and energy from them and have no alternative on time scales or 10 years

More importantly for Canadians that food or energy has no alternative competing market to sell into. Consequently the Canadians are totally dependent on the US market to even set the price of it. This applies to many other sectors as well.

Canada is currently having a huge desperate push to export to non US markets because of the levels of uncertainty that have been created. And I say this as someone not totally dismissive of the US position, but they need to do a far better job of bringing their allies into the tent with them.

Historically there have been plenty of incentives to stop exporting. Its called an embargo. Usually in an attempt to get the host country to change foreign policy, though I can't think of any situation where it actually worked. Examples: Napoleon's "Continental System" against Great Brtain, US oil embargo against Japan prior to WWII, Confederate States of America cotton embargo against the UK during the early years of the American Civil War

Yes it's definitely possible, but very rare and as you pointed out (especially in the confederacy's case) it usually harms the exporter much more than it helps.

I'd say that in any case of a serious Canadian export embargo, it will have been in retaliation to US trade policy or US invasion, not the other way around.

We had essentially no risk that Canada would embargo us, there was no possibility of this happening for the last 150 years until we became the aggressors

At any time, Canada could decide to stop subsidizing its uncompetitive chip makers for the same reason so many people in this thread want the US to do, and the US would then become dependent on someone else who might be their enemy (eg. Chinese occupied Taiwan or China itself).

> go to war

It won't be war. It'll be one-sided trade deals [1,2], and a slow erosion of economic and political sovereignty, culminating in a puppet state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada-China_Promotion_and_Rec...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/fipa-agreement-with-china-wha...

One sided trade deals in which they continue exporting to us and import less

There is plenty of risk that our neighbors stop importing and almost no risk they stop exporting

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