That was probably Richard Rohmer’s 1974 book Exxoneration.
If I recall correctly it goes like this:
American President: We’re gonna take Canada’s oil and make them pay for it!
Canadians: Nope.
American General: American military transports full of are landing in major Canadian cities.
Canada: Yup. The first ones have touched down and we can see long lines of them waiting to land.
Canadian General: We have rocket launchers trained on the aircraft on the ground. If any open their doors to let troops out, they all go boom. Your remaining aircraft will continue landing and will join them. We’ll negotiate their release once your troops crossing the border return to their side.
American General: Dammit, Canadians! This was supposed to be a bloodless takeover!
One of the key lessons of that war is that if you’re going to declare war on a neighboring country, you should probably alert the your folks on the border.
At least one American fort first heard about the war when a Canadian officer visited, pointed to the cannon that had been positioned on the bluff overlooking the fort, and pointed out that the battle was effectively already over.
I get the impression that the war was essentially between Canada and the US southern states - it was the south that demanded war. The north-eastern states and Canadian provinces remained relatively friendly to each other. When some American towns in the north-west had their gun powder seized for the war effort, Canadian towns supplied gun powder for their 4th of July celebrations.
Invasion from the US against heroic resistance is a recurrent pleasurable fantasy for Canadians, but in fact Canada has effectively been a willing colony of the US for generations, and much of it is actually owned, as private property, by Americans or American corporations. If there were a strong, radical independence movement in Canada, the US might ‘assist’ the government in suppressing it, but there isn’t. Apparently Canadians will sell the US whatever it wants.
Why the heck is “water rights” always played out of proportion in these types of books. Desalination is a cheap and relatively mature technology. If we run out of water in the entire USA(which seems unlikely), we can just desalinate the oceans.
The issue with desertification of the US is that it drives the cost of food up. Food crops require a lot of cheap water. If the midwest doesn’t have regular rain, corn is going to become much more expensive. However, global warming doesn’t mean that all of the world is going to “dry up”. It just means that weather patterns will shift. Places that previously received a lot of rain will dry up while places that were dry will become wet. Since we ship A LOT of food in from all over the world, this shouldnt really have a massive impact on our economy. As far as getting water to dry areas, the issue becomes one of transportation of water rather than a lack of water. Countries with large and varied landmasses and advanced industrial capacity(Russia, China, US, and Canada) have little to fear. They can simply divert resources.
The countries that are going to get fucked are smaller and poorer countries(Iraq, Turkey, Syria) with complex water resource issues.
Desalination is not exactly cheap and needs massive amounts of energy. Sure, waste heat of, say, an electrical power plant can be used, but one still need to construct and maintain a rather large industrial complex (e.g. something like this).
I read the first issue, and felt that it was a good story with a relevant moral hazard warning for our nation and our solders. I just couldn’t get past the depiction of american solders as mindless murder Nazis. As a veteran with friends and family that served in every branch of the military it sickens me to see our solders portrayed like that. I know that was the point, and having not read past that I don’t know if the American solders actions were explained as a product of corrupt government or if they just decided to make American solders straight up evil for the sake of the story.
One of my my great.x.grandparents landed in Massachusetts in 1630, another group were dutch settlers in New Jersey back in New Amsterdam times, their great.x.grandkids came north to New Brunswick as British loyalists. My grandmother was born in North Dakota and her dad born in South Dakota; they broke land-and-back in the Canadian prairie land rush. My parents were born Canadian, and, my brother lives in LA. Until about 20 years ago border crossings were more record keeping, about who passed through and when, than filtering for terrorists.
I also reflect on singular migrations, the underground railroad of black slaves into Canada, into Upper Canada and Maritimes; the First Nations kids adopted into American families in the “60s Scoop”; the exodus of draft dodgers into Canada in the 60s; Americans joining CEF and RCAF in Canada before the US entered WW1 and WW2. Ask a Lakota, Dakota or Nakota and they don’t recognize the border at all, same for Mohawk or Salish and all the others.
The world sees Canadians as like-Americans, but not so fucking arrogant. In other words, just as racist, but nice about it. Ask a Canadian and they’d start frothing at the mouth about American politics, attitudes and problems and how different they really are. An American would give you a blank stare…unless one of their parents was Canadian then they would be flush with stories about trips to Canada and relatives there.
A US invasion would be more like a civil war, with a twisted clusterfuck furball of regret.
Consider America’s drone strikes. A joint study by Stanford and New York Universities of drone strikes in Pakistan found that US drone strikes have been killing 49 people for every known terrorist.
Not just because of innocent bystanders being killed. It’s because of the US’s use of “double-taps” - something the US itself calls terrorism - where after the first strike they’ll send in more missiles to target rescuers.
Note that this is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Civilian rescuers, aiding almost entirely (49:1) civilian bystanders.
Or consider the US’s first Predator drone killing, back in 2002. Three men in Afghanistan, murdered because one of them was tall, so obviously he must be Osama Bin Laden.
So yeah. I don’t see American solders - on the ground, in direct contact with the local population - as mindless murder Nazis either. But sitting behind a screen thousands of miles away? We’re already there, and it’s well documented.
Waaaaaaaaaat? Also, desalination is “cheap”? Disagreed on both points.
Some quick reading for you: Tri-state water dispute. Those three states would be Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Having the ability to divert water doesn’t simply remove the harm of global climate change in the context of water availability.
But I will agree with your last statement, that the little countries will get screwed.
Cheap is somewhat of a relative term. We are talking about pennies per 1000 gallons of water.
As far as the cost of electricity, well that is baked into that cost figure I just mentioned.
Where do we get all of that electricity? If only the US were an industrial nation with literally massive capacity to create energy!
What I want to see is a canadian four man team wipe out an entire group, not like ludicrously outnumbered, but like a good show of what well defended locals that know the lay of the land and prepared the area as a killbox can do. Then amid the wreckage and fire and bodies one of the defenders finds an american barely alive but clearly about to not be.
If WP is to believe the plant near San Diego produces 1000L of fresh water for about 80 cents, with construction costs of ~ $1 billion. Build 13 more and San Diego does not need to import water anymore.
The US can probably support a water system based on desalination, but it will not be “cheap” for most meanings of the word.
