Canada War-Games U.S. Invasion as Trump Rhetoric Reshapes North American Relations

Prime Minister Mark Carney has confirmed what would have seemed absurd just years ago: Canada's military is preparing for the possibility of an American invasion. Speaking to the New York Times last week, Carney acknowledged that his government has tasked the armed forces with running scenarios around a US attack, framing the exercise as straightforward risk management in an era when the relationship between the two countries has become unpredictable. He was careful to note that the actual threat remains remote, but said a leader cannot ignore possibilities simply because they seem unlikely.

The shift in Canadian thinking reflects the turbulence of the Trump presidency and its particular fixations. The president's sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods, combined with his repeated public musing about absorbing Canada as a 51st state, have pushed Ottawa to reconsider assumptions that held for generations. In 2025, Trump himself said an invasion was "highly unlikely" and that economic pressure would remain his tool of choice. The White House reiterated this position to the BBC this week, claiming the president has "done more than anyone to protect the great people of Canada." Yet the damage to confidence was already done. A Leger poll conducted in January found that more than 30 percent of Canadians believed an invasion was likely—a spike that followed the US military's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an operation that seemed to demonstrate American willingness to act unilaterally in the hemisphere.

Military analysts and former officers stress that an actual invasion remains a distant prospect. Lieutenant-General Christopher Coates, who spent 34 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and held senior command positions, told the BBC that in his entire career, the possibility of a military attack from American territory was never seriously entertained. The two nations are woven together across multiple defense architectures: both are NATO members bound by collective defense obligations, they conduct joint Arctic operations through the North American Aerospace Defence Command, and they share intelligence routinely. If conflict were to come, Coates suggested, it would not arrive as a conventional military assault but through subtler means—cyberwarfare, perhaps, or other discrete operations that would not trigger the alliance commitments that bind them.

Canada's current war-gaming represents the first time in a century that the country has formally planned for an American military assault. According to modeling reported by the Globe and Mail earlier this year, a US attack would likely overwhelm Canada's strategic positions within a week, forcing Canadian forces into a protracted guerrilla campaign. The scenario assumes that allied nations like France and Britain would be called upon to provide support. Coates characterized this modeling as relatively light compared to the comprehensive planning that NATO allies maintain, and he noted that Canada has been slow to develop robust contingency plans for ground invasion—a gap that is now being addressed with urgency. Canada's defense chief has called for a dramatic expansion of the military, including the addition of as many as 300,000 lightly trained citizen soldiers.

The historical irony is not lost on Canadian scholars. Tim Foran, a researcher at the Canadian War Museum, notes that fear of American expansion is foundational to Canada's very existence as a political entity. The colonies that became Canada remained loyal to the British Crown when the American colonies rebelled. The US attempted to invade British North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, seizing Montreal in 1775 and nearly taking Quebec City. The War of 1812 saw repeated American incursions into what was then Upper Canada, Lower Canada, and the maritime colonies, ending in stalemate—though British troops did famously burn the White House in retaliation. After World War I, as American power grew, Canada drafted contingency plans informed by secret reconnaissance missions in which army generals posed as tourists, photographing bridges and highways and interviewing local residents to understand potential enemy terrain.

Andrew Burtch, also of the Canadian War Museum, explains that military planning for unlikely scenarios is routine work. What is unusual is the current moment: the fact that Canadian leaders feel compelled to dust off these plans and take them seriously. Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, sees the Canadian response as a barometer of how drastically the global order has shifted. He notes that Canadian leaders now face a genuine dilemma about how closely they wish to remain integrated with American military systems—partnerships that provide valuable intelligence but also create vulnerabilities should relations deteriorate. "It's really doing harm to relationships with the United States, and there's a certain amount of legitimate fear," he said.

Schmidt also observes that while Americans may dismiss Trump's 51st state rhetoric as political theater, Canadians are taking it as a serious statement of intent and preparing accordingly. He believes that even if relations were to spiral toward actual conflict, the US would face its own obstacles. Many American military officers, he suggested, would resign rather than accept an order to invade Canada, viewing such an action as illegal and immoral. Canadian and American soldiers train together routinely and share mutual respect. Yet if the unthinkable occurred, Schmidt said the US would likely focus on acquiring Canadian resources—oil, minerals—and on what military strategists call "political decapitation." He drew a parallel to the Venezuela operation, suggesting a similar model of targeted intervention. Despite the vast disparity in military capacity, he added, Canadian soldiers would be capable of mounting a credible defense. What remains to be seen is whether the current military preparations will serve as a stabilizing signal—a demonstration that Canada is serious about its sovereignty—or whether they will further strain a relationship already tested by tariffs and rhetoric.