snowpuppy said:
I think america or a place with similar gun laws would be very hard to invade.
JB1528 said:
Filled with gun-toting nationalist rednecks all waiting for a fight: USA...
with over 300 million citizens and an estimated 45% of those citizens who own firearms, your in for a hell of a fight.
Toasty Virus said:
Now, if you were to mean an invasion which would also lead to you trying to keep the land itself, then I would say either a place like those two above, or the US, just cause a high number of civilians carry guns. There's also this small tidbit I saw a few months ago from a newspaper. America's Army drafts 3% of the country's population. of that 3, only 1% of it makes it training. So you havea lot of rejected trained soldiers, a good number of people who grow up and live hunting and knowing the land, and the gangs that constant fight an urban warfare against each other.
With those three groups by themselves, not working in any organized way, itw ould be hard to occupy the land and keep it.
... but then again, I'm somewhat biased as I live in the US, and have seen a good bit of the gang violence and what it brings.
lol, inb4 everyone picks their own country?
I agree that either Russia or the US would be the hardest to invade. Well, no. Russia would be easy to invade, that is, to send your troops across the border, but to occupy it would be something else. But when I say the US would be hard to invade, I'm talking about military and technological superiority, not all this stuff you guys are talking about above. Civilians with guns...
Yes, those guys could definitely pester an army. And yes, guerilla warfare would wreck havoc on occupations, operations, senior military leaders; examples in Jerusalem with the Maccabees, the Résistance in France during WWII and even terrorists in the Middle East in the present point to this being a huge factor in weakening armies.
But don't think for a second that a hillbilly with a confederate flag painted on his face and an old Winchester rifle or 12-gauge is going to be able to take out a bunch of well-trained Chinese/Russian/whatever soldiers. Obviously the invading forces would be aware of the fact that many American citizens own firearms and would take measures against it. Sure, there would be casualties, many of them, and I'm sure that in certain central cities like Chicago, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Denver etc., guerilla forces would win. But in seaboard cities, presumably the foreign power's navy would have taken over those ports and would be unloading troops constantly in those places (if the US' navy was defeated). I think the US could definitely stave off a huge invasion without much bloodshed on their own soil, but it would NOT be because of armed civilians.
Plus armed civilians
generally don't have artillery, bombs, or (anti)aircraft.
Treblaine said:
Russia.
So many have tried, with everything in their favour, yet so many have failed.
The United States would be a close second. Why second place? Canada. With Canada as a truly reliable ally then harder to beat than Russia but Canada at the same time could screw over the US royally with a vast vulnerable northern Border with s many supply, communication and utilities shared between them.
Realistically, Canada and America would stick together. But that is two countries together hard to invade.
Hmm, Britain.
Is Britain that hard to invade? We are an island but our almost 1000 years without a successful invasion has depended almost entirely on our Navy. Japan you could see as a Mirror image of the British Isles, and it was demonstrated how vulnerable an island can be to a larger aggressor with established continental ports.
Japan got cut off and bombed into oblivion and with no room to move, even ruling out Atomic Bombs the invasion of Japan by most simulations would have been a success. In fact the mining and anti-shipping campaign was so effective Japan would have descended into abject famine by the end of 1945 and by 1946 couldn't have resisted any invasion.
As great as it is to be a small island surrounded by sea, it also leaves you extremely vulnerable to blockade and aerial bombardment.
See Russia has several things a small island like Japan or UK can't have:
-vast areas to sacrifice for time
-being far in from the sea, summers are scorching and winters are Arctic, invaders suffer more than the locals.
-Much more natural resources inland to exploit
-easier to trade/supply with a large land border. Land borders are hard to close, seas can be blockaded by submarines, sea-mines, while ship-convoys are easier to destroy from the air than train/truck convoys
PS: China would be on this list but the country is just too mountainous, it is too hard to move troops and resources around. Japan and other western powers did effectively invade and occupy China and would have done so indefinitely had the situation not changed with World War 2. Also it has a large coastal vulnerability, when superior naval forces dominate the seas all of China gets dominated.
Russia has many pivotal ports and coastal region, but not any that are either easily taken or are of such a great loss to lose.
This, I think, was the most sensible post on Page 1, since I didn't read pages 2-5, but this was very well thought out. I do agree that the UK would be fairly easy to invade if another superpower was doing the invading. There simply isn't the military or technology there to defend against the US, Russia, China, etc. Sure, Britain defended great against Germany in two World Wars, but at the time of both of those, Britain's army/navy/air force was still among the top in the world, rivalled only by the US (an ally) and Germany.
I also agree about the US and Canada. Canadians and Americans, while a bit different, share basically the same values and an undefended border, and two of the largest, richest countries worldwide in both technology and resources. Invading two countries at the same time would be a tough task. Either would jump to the others' side during a conflict and on their homeland, there would just be too much ground to cover with not enough troops, and too many defending aircraft, navy, land vehicles, and bombs.