Military Ambitions in 1930

Dug this up today, dam it's hard toget a handle on National Leaders and their blind ambition, liars and cheats the lot of em.


http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p121_HNAC.html

[STEED]

Watched a documentary last week about that, it concluded America would have taken Canada but the Atlantic battle would have been heavy losses to both sides resulting in deadlock which would have lead to peace talks.

[STEED]

War Plan Red was not the only colour...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...oded_war_plans

[Osmium Steele]

The Pentagon, or its 1930 equivalent, wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't have plans of this type. Even if the likelyhood of needing them is remote at best.

Threatening the Northeast's hydroelectric power, in 1930, would be like threatening our oil supply today...

[Dread Knot]

On the other side of the fence, Canada had plans for invading the United States too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1

Defence Scheme No. 1 was a plan created by Canadian Director of Military Operations and Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel James "Buster" Sutherland Brown, for a Canadian pre-emptive invasion of the United States.

[Betonov]

I guess every country has such plans.

I believe there was some rumors about a slovenian plan from 1992 about a war with Croatia, taking Istria from them while they were preocupied with Serbia

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

On the other side of the fence, Canada had plans for invading the United States too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1

We can fight fire with fire, just build a train that goes from the Mexican boarder to Canadian.

[Herr-Berbunch]

I watched that War Plan Red documentary too, it was good, but whatever the experts think all plans fail at the first step in some form. We'll never know who'd have won/lost what in real time! Nice to learn that Britain was being rooted for by all sides against everybody else

[joea]

Doesn't mean the US was planning to invade Canada-it just means the military in times of peace keep themselves busy inventing all kinds of scenarios, I'm willing to bet there are military plans to deal with a zombie outbreak in some file.

The other thing is the military wants to cover themselves when political leaders ask for any contingency they can say they have a plan to deal with it-no matter how unlikely.

BTW to sidslotm, do find a more reputable site for historical research will you?

I seem to recall that in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, some media got hold of Plan Red, although it was common knowledge in the military community for some time. The aim was to embarrass Dubya and give politically motivated anti-American pundits something to demonstrate the historical evil that has always been the USA.

That assessment is of course is pure crap and has been noted above, one of the functions of the military is to contingency plan for the improbable as well as the possible.

When the existence of these types of plans become public knowledge, over-reaction as shown by the OP is generally the result but the mere existence of a plan does not automatically mandate its execution.

There are excellent reasons why functional command and control organizations separate capability (What can They do?) from intentions (What are They likely to do?) when making intelligence assessments. Plan Red is solely about capability and its existence or even exercises designed to aid the planning process posed zero threat to Canada. Note though that its main premise is rooted solidly in the Monroe Doctrine and does not appear to have been revised to account for the new relationship between Britain and Canada from the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Pretty good evidence that the Joint Board created Plan Red as a purely military scheme with minimal input from the State Department.

Defence Scheme 1 is the same idea; we examined it during a course in 1985 using it as a sample of the operational separation between capability of a potential foe and their intentions. The former is primarily military but the latter mostly political in nature.

Problems occur when the leadership blurs the lines between the two; introducing threat inflation and fear into the mix. The handling of the WMD issues before Gulf War 2 is a good example of this since the contingency planning included hypothetical Iraqi WMD and America's military response and theoretical (and disputed) capabilities merged with the threat assessment to create a political over-reaction to a non-existent threat. This has happened many times in the past and the experience is no way unique to the USA.

[joegrundman]

might make quite a cool game. maybe warplan red-orange would be more balanced

[Krauter]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

We can fight fire with fire, just build a train that goes from the Mexican boarder to Canadian.

Not needed trust me...

In my town the population gains a good two to three thousand "citizens" here for work in the fields

[Torplexed]

War Plan Red really stopped being realistic after World War One. I'm sure they just kept updating it after that as a staff exercise, along the lines of "just in case". Prior to the Great War, War Plan Red was the one more likely to be used, especially after the British signed an alliance with Japan in 1902. The USN being nervous over that. Australia and New Zealand were not all that happy about it either. There was a brief period after World War I that Japan and the UK still had a naval alliance and War Plan Red-Orange was for a Pacific War against the combined fleets of Japan and Great Britain. However, the Japanese-British Alliance was cancelled not long after. Since it was declassified in 1974 it's been touted by the more paranoid as indicative of impending US designs on Canada. Hey, we invaded Canada twice and failed. Time to quit.

[Highbury]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

We can fight fire with fire, just build a train that goes from the Mexican boarder to Canadian.

We surrender! WE SURRENDER!!!