How Trump could in fact make Canada a US territory

“We take nothing by conquest…Thank God,” wrote the National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, an influential Washington newspaper, in February 1847.

The United States had just purchased 55% of Mexico for US$15 million as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The pact concluded the bloody Mexican-American War, which claimed thousands of lives.

Despite the loss of life, and American ambitions to take all of Mexico, the treaty painted the whole experience as a rightful “cession” of land rather than a conquest.

Every Canadian needs to pay attention to this bit of American history. In one treaty, the US annexed the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. It subsequently illegally invaded Indigenous territory in the west.

Canada could be next — perhaps not immediately as the 51st state, but quite possibly as a US territory that would deny Canadians any voting rights for Congress or the presidency, allow only some autonomy and make questions of citizenship ambiguous. The constitutional architecture exists in the US to make it happen.

Impossible? Unthinkable? Many pundits dismiss Trump’s bellicose rhetoric as hot-headed bargaining. It’s just tough talk, they say. Some have argued his bluster is simply part of his favored “art of the deal” negotiating tactics.

That’s the wrong reading. How Trump could make good on the threat can be found in the US Constitution. There is both potential and precedent for the US to acquire territory through cession or subjugation.

Invading Canada

The War Plan Red of 1930 was also drummed up by the US Department of War on how to invade Canada if ever needed.

It included shocking details about kicking off the attack in