There Is No Legal Way For Trump To Invade Canada
Why American Exceptionalism causes even good Americans to completely miss the point when it comes to an invasion of Canada (or Greenland, or Panama, or anywhere else) by the USA.
I’ve been seeing a lot of social media posts recently by Americans asking serving US military personnel if they would obey an order to invade Canada, given that they apparently swear an oath to not obey illegal orders. And invariably, someone (who is clearly anti-Trump and against the invasion of Canada) will reply with something like this:
This argument epically misses the point, and the reason it epically misses the point is that the poster is looking at everything from the point of view of America, and through the lens of American Exceptionalism.
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations. Proponents argue that the values, political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history, often with the implication that it is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage. —Wikipedia entry on American Exceptionalism.
It’s important to note that in America, accusing someone of believing in American Exceptionalism isn’t an insult. Quite the contrary in fact: politicians are required to state their belief in American Exceptionalism. In 2015, Barack Obama declared “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being”. (And what gets really weird is that link is to an impartial fact checking site that was declaring false a Republican lie that Obama wouldn’t “proudly proclaim American exceptionalism”).
So just to summarise:
Many Americans from all sides of the political spectrum will state a belief that the USA is simply intrinsically superior to all other countries (which makes me feel that they think that Americans are intrinsically better than the rest of us, although I’ll accept that isn’t quite fair).
Progressive, liberal politicians are required to also state that they think the USA is simply intrinsically superior to all other countries, because if they don’t, this will be seen as somehow traitorous.
Now an American might counter with the fact that everyone says things like that. And my answer would be yes, but not to this extent. It’s one thing to hyperbolically declare that your football team is the best, another to tell supporters of other football teams that your team is better than theirs and that therefore your team should have preferential treatment and a preferential say, and be offended if they don’t agree with you.
Anyhow, back to the point of this article, which is that it doesn’t matter a damn about whether or not Congress authorises a war or not. It doesn’t matter a damn what your laws say or what your constitution says, because your laws don’t apply to other people’s countries.
Let’s look at the first of three categories against which Nazi civilian and military leaders were tried at Nuremberg:
(If you’re wondering, the other two categories were “War Crimes”, and “Crimes against Humanity”.
One of the examples of a “Crime Against Peace” was a “War of Aggression”, which is defined thus:
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation, in contrast with the concept of a just war. —Wikipedia entry for War of Aggression.
Essentially, at Nuremberg, it was decided that war is like homicide: illegal by default, with the onus on the persons waging it to demonstrate that it is in self-defence or the defence of others.
If a country is controlled by an evil dictator who’s waging a brutal war against his own people, then it might potentially be legal for you to invade that country with the intention of overthrowing him and restoring that country to its citizens.
But if a country is peaceful and free, under the control of its citizens, and you invade that country with the intention of annexing that country into your own — that is by definition illegal under international law, massively so.
It doesn’t matter that it might be legal according to your laws.
German generals who participated in the invasions of Poland, Denmark, Norway et al found themselves in the dock at Nuremberg despite their protestations that they themselves had always obeyed the Geneva Convention. The point they were missing is that they’d participated in a War of Aggression that constituted a Crime Against Peace.
This is the point that American Exceptionalists of all political shades miss. Just as your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose, the legality of your laws and your constitution ends when you enter the soil of someone else’s country.
An invasion of Canada by the USA would be a Crime Against Peace as defined at the Nuremberg trials, and would be a crime worthy of having all involved at any any high level tried and convicted before an international court.
Even if that invasion was approved by Congress.
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