Donald Trump is not joking about making Canada the 51st state, Justin Trudeau warns in hot mic comments

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This is part of what has made Trump so successful:

He has convinced his base (and a lot of the media) that what he says doesnt matter - lying, outrageous claims, incendiary remarks. He is schrodingers politician and his positions generally are "Whatever person X wants him to be". There is also massive dissonance on Trump "telling it like it is" - despite that NOBODY holds him to his word.

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The difference here is that we're not in a cold war with Canada or France.

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Oh, you mean we were already in WWII, not that we specifically responded to Pearl Harbour.

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Pump the breaks there buddy. Canada has done plenty of fucked up shit that mirrors America and in some cases were actualy worse. They've just got better PR.

Trump is clearly a fucking asshole facist but ask the First Nations how much better and kinder Canadians are.

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Yo, this won't be an annex. It will be an invasion if he really wants it, same with Greenland. You think Canada will just roll over? Imagine if fucking Mexico decided to take back Texas. (At this point, please do, I could use some new leadership here)

I'm so sorry Canadians, yall just up there doing your thing and these assholes just trying to fuck your shit up.

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no longer trust their sources for USA licensed designs so drawing on the NATO compliant, but not NATO standard, French weapons. France has maintained those since the founding of NATO because they side eye us in all things. a behavior i bet they're feeling pretty good about right now

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Yeah we aussies know how badly we treated our indigenuos people too, the new zealanders were better, as I said. I'm still going to shill for anyone who stands up to trump. We live in the prrsent.

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Oh cool. Sweden also has some stuff.

We make armoured cars... and that's it AFAIK.

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Wait. Which war was Canada Not in? We don't make a big show of it, but we've been in a few of them.

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Risk as in risk of it happening, not risk if it does happen.

Nuclear proliferation is what we're talking about, and the basic idea is that if you have n nuclear powers, that's n^2^ potential conflicts that could start at any moment.

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Trump has zero sense of humour. He never jokes. Every comment he makes is a serious possibility in his mind.

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Unfortunately, this is not about what Canada wants. This is about what Canada needs. I do not want Canada to have to build a nuclear arsenal either. Realize, I am advocating for the construction of nuclear weapons that will be pointed at my own head. THAT is fucked up. I do not make this recommendation lightly.

Reality check. 90% of the Canadian population lives within 150 miles of the US border. An M1 Abrams tank can drive that distance in an afternoon. The Canadian military is woefully unprepared to resist such an advance. The Canadian military is not designed to resist the might of the US. It's designed to provide some valuable but niche roles as part of the NATO alliance. And this is not some failure to plan on the part of my Canadian brothers. Frankly, Canada was never going to be able to develop such a capability. Canada has approximately 12% of the population of the US, and a vast territory to defend. Even if Canada become as militaristic as North Korea, Canada simply does not have the resources to develop the capability to militarily resist the US using conventional arms.

Do you think an alliance will save you? NATO membership means nothing in this context. When an outside country invades a NATO member, they can activate Article 5. However, nothing happens automatically. The NATO members then must convene to formulate a response, and any single member can veto the resolution. Greece and Turkey, both NATO members, have fought several armed conflicts while both being NATO members. NATO will not be coming to save you.

The Commonwealth? Could you dust that thing off and appeal to King Charles for aid? I'm sure he'll send his dearest sympathies, but the redcoats will not be coming to save you this time. Compare the stats of the US Navy to the Royal Navy and let me know how that would go. I'm sure the Royal Navy's 160 aircraft will be a formidable match for the US Navy's 2600. We could also look at other military branches. But the disparities would be similar, and the forces of King Charles would have no way to get to Canadian soil. I'm sorry to say, but 1812 was a very long time ago. The forces of King Charles would struggle to resist, with conventional arms, a US invasion of the UK mainland. Realistically, if the UK wanted to offer any meaningful assistance to Canada, it would have to come in the form of thermonuclear weaponry.

What about the EU? Could Canada join the EU? Would that save you? First, it takes years to join the EU. But even if you could waive a magic wand and join tomorrow? The EU does have the population and economy to potentially stand up to the US. But they don't have the defense sector necessary. There is no vast EU expeditionary army that is going to sail across the Atlantic and go to-to-toe against the US Army and Marines. There is no formidable EU Navy that's going to serve as a credible threat to the Americans. In time, the EU could build that capability. But we're talking, extremely optimistically, a decade to spin up that magnitude of a military industrial complex. US army soldiers will be fishing on the northern coast of Nunavut before the EU parliament even passes the budget appropriations.

Could Canadian irregulars resist the advance? Canada is not some war-torn country in the Middle East that has had insurgent fighting going on for decades. There isn't some vast network of Canadian insurgent groups with the skills and resources to build improvised explosives and knowledgeable of insurgent tactics. There aren't thousands of guerilla fighters that might credibly slow down a US invasion. How many suicide bombings has Canada had in the last year? Canada is not Iraq or Syria. I have no doubt that a fierce resistance movement would eventually develop after a US invasion. But irregulars would not be able to actually prevent such an invasion.

If Canada wants to actually deter a US invasion, they need to consider a domestic nuclear arsenal now. They should have considered it the moment Trump started talking about annexation. Canada should negotiate with Britain or France to have British or French weapons stationed on Canadian soil. And that would provide a meaningful deterrent while Canada develops their own arsenal.

Now, the French or UK arsenals cannot come close to matching that of the US. Combined they have 500 warheads, while the US has 5,000. But nuclear weapons are the great equalizer of international politics. Even 50 nuclear warheads on Canadian soil would successfully deter any potential US invasion. It would mean that whatever the US might hope to gain from invading Canada would be dwarfed by what the US would lose in the conflict.

Sorry for the long response. But TLDR, Canada is hopelessly outmatched against the US in conventional military forces, and there is no realistic way its allies will be able to defend it using conventional weapons. A nuclear arsenal is the only way for Canada to ensure its survival as a nation against a US gone mad. And I write this as an American.

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If this is true, then another non-Putin style election is off the table.

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If it were to happen the way it's "supposed" to, if Canada were admitted as one state it would instantly become the largest state and gain FIFTY electoral votes, as a state gets the same number as they do Senators and Representatives combined. Again, barring the very shenanigans that would likely be the only way this could happen, those fifty votes would be Democratic-leaning for at least a generation. Alberta and the Prairies combined don't have many more people than the GTA.

You could mitigate the presidential-electoral hit by letting them in as 13 provinces, but then you're probably adding 16-18 Dem Senators versus 8-10 Republican. The only real hope is to get the Canadians to vote against their interests and split their Electoral votes when almost no other states (and no other large states at all) do so.

That's assuming it happens aboveboard, of course, which naturally it wouldn't, and would instead plunge the entire continent into violent misery if not outright war.

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No, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Canada and Britain declared war on Japan before the US did.

Interestingly, though the United States suffered the most casualties and damage from Japan’s multiple attacks on December 7 (December 8 in Japan and east Asia), the American government wasn’t the first to declare war on the Japanese Empire. Even before President Roosevelt convinced Congress to approve a declaration of war, both Britain and Canada had declared war on the Imperial nation on December 7, 1941.

https://pearlharbor.org/blog/declarations-war-pearl-harbor/

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That's a nice and noble idealism, but what evidence do you have for it? Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, and look how that turned out for them. There is a reason Zelensky has been pushing so hard for NATO membership. It's easy to idealistically reject nuclear weapons when you're a nation that is comfortably protected by the nuclear umbrella of a friendly allied superpower. It's easy to tut-tut, scoff, and say "bombs do not protect from bombs." But I have yet to see a nuclear-armed nation ever face an existential threat of invasion from a hostile outside power. Despite how much you might claim they are useless, nuclear-armed countries sure do tend not to get invaded. Notice how Trump routinely talks about invading Iran, but no one talks about toppling the North Korean regime anymore? Or why haven't the Western powers come riding to Ukraine's aid like they did Poland in World War Two? Despite your idealism, as a practical matter, it is not possible to invade and annex a nation that has a nuclear arsenal.

Nuclear weapons, despite how distasteful they are, are the international relations equivalent of "high fences make good neighbors." Canada has been protected by a nuclear arsenal for generations. But they've had the luxury until now of pretending they aren't.

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When Pearl Harbour was attacked we declared war on Japan before America did

Must be nice having allies like that. Those are the kind of friends you should hold on to and not inflict ridiculous tariffs on or anything like that.

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Oh, you do mean that. TIL, wow.

Wikipedia makes it sound like they basically just decided to do it really fast to make a point. I suppose already being in a state of total war also helps.

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https://archive.ph/whrZo

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An M1 Abrams tank can drive that distance in an afternoon.

Just one thing...

No, it can't. Took us 16 days to drive a squadron of them from Kuwait to Baghdad. Most of the time they spent on flatbed tractor trucks, because of the a) fuel consumption per mile (Like 15 gallons per mile or so) and b) maintenance. Those things throw tracks bad on asphalt. But, they slow down a lot on dirt.

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Donald Trump is not joking about making Canada the 51st state, Justin Trudeau warns in hot mic comments