War Plan Red

In doing some research into the US War Plan Orange this week, I stumbled across some other interesting plans developed in the aftermath of WW1, mostly to exercise War Planning and Strategic staffs learning, but also useful as the basis for contingencies.

Of striking interest to me was the US War Plan Red, which was to fight a war against England, and potentially Japan also as per the provisions of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.  War Plan Red had a number of subset plans, notably War Plan Scarlet against Australian, New Zealand and Commonwealth interests in the Pacific, and War Plan Crimson against Canada.  Interestingly, War Plan Red had the US assume a strategically defensive posture against what they saw would be a mostly Atlantic affair and prepare for a landing of British Troops on the east coast of the Continental USA.  At the same time, the planner saw that a invasion of British interests in Canada and the Caribbean would be the best way to reduce British interests on the continent.

All very interesting, particularly when one then lays on top of that the Canadian Defence Scheme Number 1 which was for a counter invasion of the US to stall for time and allow British support to cross the Atlantic.  The Canadian plan saw flying columns seizing territory along the Pacific and Atlantic US coasts.  An audacious plan indeed but one that was seen as sufficiently desperate it might just succeed if the dice rolled correctly.

And so were laid the plans of what might have been, but more interesting is to consider them being executed in the 1890s...with a few VSF elements thrown in...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
http://tarpley.net/online-books/against-oligarchy/britains-pacific-war-against-the-united-states-in-the-age-of-the-anglo-american-special-relationship/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1
http://www.glasnost.de/hist/usa/1935invasion.html