Let’s try a thought experiment.
It’s December 1994. The Cold War has just ended and has resulted in the collapse of the Union of North American Social Republics (UNASR). Following its dissolution, the United States had the third largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, only shadowed by the two major nuclear states: Canada and Australia. However, in a wider effort of nuclear non-proliferation, delegates from Canada, Australia, and Japan met in Sao Paulo to sign the appropriately/vaguely named Sao Paulo Memorandum. In accordance with the Memorandum, we (i.e., the United States) agreed to relinquish our significant stockpile of warheads in return for security assurances from Australia, as well as a recognition of our territorial sovereignty from all signatories.
Jump to 2014. Canada, in a blatant violation of article 1 of the Sao Paulo Memorandum, seizes and annexes Maine. Americans were understandably outraged, and sanctions are immediately imposed as well as armaments provided by Australia, Japan, and other Western allies.
Over the course of eight years, different U.S. presidents pled to the guarantors of the Memorandum (viz., Australia), but to little avail. Canada, seeing these pleas as an opportunity, brazenly invaded our sovereign territory; annexing huge swaths of northern regions; specifically Michigan, Minnesota, and most of Wisconsin. After three long, arduous years of war; including daily occurrences of rape, bombings, executions, kidnappings, and any number of other horrors inflicted on our people by the Canadians, we have been able to maintain our sovereignty. This has come at a great cost: over 80,000 soldiers killed; 400,000 soldiers wounded; 50,000 civilian casualties; and 20,000 children abducted. Our friends, fathers, mothers, children now buried or maimed. Yet—despite the hell we’ve been through—we’ve been able to sustain a continued advantage over the invading Canadian forces who’ve suffered an eye-popping 800,000 casualties, including nearly 200,000 deaths. The Canadian economy now utterly decimated—staying afloat only by shifting towards a total war economy—has added to our optimism.
It is true that over the course of the war we’ve relied heavily on Australian-made weaponry; namely supersonic ballistic missiles and air-defense systems. But through American ingenuity, we were able to usher in an entirely new era of modern warfare with the implementation of novel drone technologies, completely altering the battlefield. And yet our leadership never lost sight of our foreign alliances; being sure to express continued appreciation for their unwavering support of the larger fight for free democracies in the face of a ruthless totalitarian invasion.
And then came the day many feared, the Australian reality-TV-star-turned-prime minister froze all military support to America, including critical intelligence the absence of which resulted in dozens of American civilian casualties/deaths and cost nothing to the Australian taxpayer. We knew it was a possibility after the Australian prime minister falsely accused our president of being a dictator, after the sniveling deputy prime minister threw a tantrum at the Lodge summit with our president, after the bare and open affection for the authoritarian overtures of the Canadian prime minister. The point was clear, and the point was cruelty. Maybe the extortion attempt by the Australians for “rare earth minerals” would hold them over? Nope. The Australians wanted to see a democracy fall, and they no longer cared about some farcical minerals deal or Western alliances or any of the purported Aussie values of “freedom” and “equality”. They were transactional and mercurial. But most of all, they were alone, and someday, perhaps, they will wish they weren’t. We, Americans, just wish the price for their solitude wasn’t our people and our land.
THE WAYFARER 