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Comment by hudon | Hacker News Reader

As Canada is separating from the US, it is growing closer with China. This makes Canada a threat to the US. This makes the US a threat to Canada. This makes the US more likely to grab Canada's arm and pull it back in its circle by force. Canada just did a model of how long it could last against a US invasion and the answer was that its defenses would last 2-5 days.

It's all unnecessary and will just cause pain to end up where it started.

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> As Canada is separating from the US, it is growing closer with China. This makes Canada a threat to the US. This makes the US a threat to Canada

But didn't you get the order of events precisely wrong?

Isn't it America who threatened Canada (become a state of the US)? Isn't America who threatened Canada with extreme tariffs? Etc.

No, I didn’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93China_relations

yes, Tump did quite clearly

The USA has a long history of bullying Canada, long before tRump. He's just more blatant and obvious about it.

There is such a concept of carrot and stick. If the USA wants Canada to be a "good" (in the eyes of America) neighbour then for the love of God why don't they start using a carrot instead of the stick?

Unfortunately, the stick is still behind their backs.

> This makes the US a threat to Canada.

Don't fool yourself. The US of late has been making it perfectly clear that it's a threat to Canada regardless of what Canada does.

Military action would be brutal, but you can only say that it's unnecessary if the alternatives are better. If not now, then how many years down the line? The claims Carney are making are not light in their own right.

2-5 days is very generous.

I think if America started at 0dark30 they would be done by lunch and home for supper.

I guess, if your mental model is Command & Conquer.

It would be like Iraq, they would quickly have Trump fly onto an aircraft carrier with a “mission accomplished” banner, then the Canadians would commit to guerrilla warfare for a few decades.

Canadians would commit to guerrilla warfare? For decades? Have you met Canadians?

Yes, yes I have. I've known a lot of Canadians over the decades. They would totally commit to guerilla warfare to defend their nation, same as most other people would. They'd be damned good at it, too.

If you think there's something about Canadians that would stop them from getting down, dirty, and vicious, then you don't know Canadians very well (and have never seen a Canadian hockey game).

Could they hold out alone over the long term? Probably not, but maybe. Smaller, less capable nations have pulled off such feats.

But also, they wouldn't be alone. They'd have quite a lot of support.

Would be hard to do if the people aren’t alive long enough to do it.

Youre saying dont do a Ukraine?

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