Subject: Re: War, currencies and jurisdictions
The US does not want Canada. At all.

This is a very nice thought, but given that the US government has stated the precise contrary repeatedly and most emphatically, it sounds a lot like wishful thinking. Or, more bluntly, just plain denial.

All the norms have been tossed out. Other than the fact that "it hasn't happened recently", I don't see any reason to think another attempted takeover of Canada can't or won't happen. It has been announced, so your thinking is what, "they're just joking?" It is unimaginably difficult to explain to an American how offensive, and indeed wilfully blind, that is.

The main reason it is entirely possible, indeed eminently plausible, is because so many people are making that very mistake: it's all just a joke, pay no attention to the fellow on the TV. US politics is too often seen as mere entertainment by voters, but (surprise) it isn't.

As you note, the unfortunate truth is that Canada is very much at the mercy of the US should they decide to become more hostile: a third attempt would succeed. They could crush the Canadian economy by banning Canadian goods, or nearly starve us out by stopping food shipments north during the winter, or any other number of things, up to and including simply driving some armed folks up the road. Canada has a lot of resources the US wants, and has always wanted, and it would make a great Melitopol-style mostly-land bridge to Greenland. It's just the thing if you want to turn continental economic power into an old school empire, and it would be naive to think that current US leaders don't want that, or don't have the will and tools to make it so should they decide to pull the trigger (such a quintessentially US idiom). They might act, they might not, things are unpredictable. But there is no support whatsoever for the notion that they simply can't because it's inconceivable. ("I don't think that word means what you think it means")

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes an expansionist empire stating the firm plan to take over other countries' territory is just that.

Jim