Canada Prepares for a US Civil War

War games.

Every country plays them.

Dark scenarios contemplating a range of risks—both likely and fantastical—to stress-test national defenses and gauge how a country might react.

Basically, conspiracy-theorist fan-fiction meets Hollywood blockbuster screenwriter.

By which I mean, the reports about these war games can be fascinating reading and provide some insight into the shadowy corners of the world most of us never think about as we’re running from work to Becky’s dance recital.

Heck, most of us don’t know to think about them.

I’ve read bunches of these war-game reports over the years, and some of them are more interesting than others. They make you think.

One I recall—I don’t remember who put it together—posited a scenario in which radical elements in the Middle East, from somewhere like Yemen or Iran, blow up a main Saudi oil pipeline, rendering it useless for months on end.

The ripples of such an attack through the global oil market cannot be overstated.

Inflation would skyrocket in the US and much of the world.

Jobs losses would pile up quicker than snow in a Rocky Mountain blizzard.

Household budgets would burst as personal bankruptcies mounted.

Now comes a new game of “what if” from our neighbors in the Great White North…

A Canadian governmental organization called Policy Horizons Canada recently published a reported titled Disruptions on the Horizon 2024—a look at all manner of potential upsets that could destabilize the land of geese and maple syrup.

Among them: People can no longer tell reality from lies, downward social mobility is the norm, biodiversity is lost and ecosystems collapse, cyberattacks disable critical infrastructure, and democratic systems break down.

And then there’s this:

U.S. ideological divisions, democratic erosion, and domestic unrest escalate, plunging [America] into civil war.

Yep… the Canucks are prepping for the possibility that Uncle Sam goes mental and his experiment in self-rule falls apart because of the great and increasingly rancorous divide between Red and Blue.

For the last dozen years, I’ve been warning that this is our destiny.

No normal American wants to hear this, but the Canucks have a legitimate reason to worry about civil war down south.

Their neighbors are actively pulling themselves apart at the seams as they fight over all kinds of things I won’t mention because each of them has, weirdly, become a “third-rail of politics” issue that offends sensibilities any time it’s broached.

All I can say at this point is that there is no easy path back to the America that we’ve lost.

Right and Left do not, cannot, and will not see eye-to-eye on the issues that divide them socially. They’re line-in-the-sand issues for both sides.

Which is why the upcoming presidential election is the most consequential election in more than a century.

No matter who wins in November, a large minority of the country is going to be incensed.

Will that lead to increased hostilities, increased frustrations, increased anger at the way the new administration runs the country and the economy?

Will that lead to civil war?

And what would a modern civil war look like anyway?

Certainly not the 1860s version. Militants in America matched against a military armed with fighter jets and drones is the equivalent of matching a three-legged Chihuahua bathed in bacon fat against an angry Pitbull that hasn’t eaten for a week.

Maybe something more like The Troubles that raged through Northern Ireland for 30 years as two diametrically opposed belief systems waged a violent, internecine struggle punctuated by car bombings, revenge killings, rioting, and attacks on government buildings.

That doesn’t seem implausible in the US, given the bombings and gun violence that have been part of the American experience over the last 30 years or so.

I’m not happy sharing these thoughts.

I’m not happy my America has reached the point that other countries are now openly war-gaming a second American civil war.

But that’s what war games are all about: Giving thought to the possibility that bad things happen to good countries.

And right now, from my vantage point looking back over the last decade or two, a good country just to the south of Canada is definitely moving toward a bad outcome.