These days, the US-Canada border is both the longest land border in the world, and one of the most peaceful. This was not always true, of course. The two countries had an actual shooting war in 1812, and nearly came to blows several more times. Most weirdly, in the 1920s and 1930s, the two countries developed very similar plans to invade each other.


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War Plan Red is a quick, Buzzfeed-ish guide to the military aspects of US-Canadian relations, focusing mostly on the various farces of US invasions in 1812, and the the Fenian raids around the Civil War, where Irish Americans tried to use military force to get Britain to release Ireland, to no avail.

The documentation is attached at the end of the book. The US War Plan Red is a rather dry geographic description of Canada, noting the lack of strategic depth, but also difficult conditions along the St. Lawrence river. The Canadian Defence Scheme No. 1, product of Lt. Col. "Buster" Brown, is more scattered (apparently most of it was destroyed), but includes some rather arch observations on the rural residents of Vermont, and argues for a rapid attack against the industrial North East to throw the American response off balance. For most of this time, Canada was part of the British Empire, and the war plans were both formed to shape circumstances by the time the Home Fleet arrived to put things right. Ironically, the British plan in the event of either circumstance was probably to do nothing. Canada wasn't worth a war with the US.