So, the easiest way is straight up conquest of Canada/Mexico by the US. This is technically doable, but doesn't make a lot of sense without some pretty wild changes in politics and geopolitics.
If you're wanting anything else, then the most plausible is basically an EU equivalent that slowly consolidates power. But again, that doesn't make too much sense, given the scales involved. I could certainly believe some sort of broader customs union, but I doubt it would go further.
More fantastically, something which fractured all three nations might produce something new and more unified. Military attack wouldn't do it, unless tech shifted altogether. Maybe alien invasion, or incredibly deadly disease? But that's less the countries unify than a new country is built.
I think if I was trying to build a realistic model of this, I'd focus on what the motivation was. Pure aggrandizement/greed doesn't work real well because there's frankly easier and more profitable things to conquer than your closest trade partners.
But some form of competition might? Maybe in a pretty fantastical setting if someone uncovered some sort of psionic tech that required the support of certain numbers of minds/people that might motivate unification into larger blocks to compete?
Or defensively? Right now military might and economic might are so intertwined that the additional space/resources/people of Canada/Mexico don't really have that much weight, but if magic was suddenly discovered and ley lines naturally followed continental lines, such that you needed full control of the continent to defend against magical attack, that might motivate it?
Alternatively, you could do some sort of intervention in civil conflict pulling the US more and more into Canadian/Mexican internal politics, until certain parts are slowly annexed over decades and those areas constantly grow? The reverse is pretty impossible due to nukes.
It's honestly a pretty hard problem.
The They who said it
The only other country besides the US with a significant population is Mexico. Canada has a tiny fraction of the people. The only other country with a significant economy is Canada, which is at around a tenth of the US's GDP. None of the central american countries come even close, and none of the non US countries have nukes, nor do they have the capacity to generate them in reasonable time, and no doubt among the most common planning exercises for logistics training are "how to invade canada" and "how to invade mexico". Invading Central America historically has been one of the national pastimes, so that's not a problem.
So a war wouldn't be too difficult to win, presumably. At best, it would be Mexican-American war 2, except with also Canada. But more likely, since borders are generally treated as a constant in modern times and it's considered poor form internationally to move them, the most plausible scenario for a full union probably starts with Canada turning into a collection of northern states for the US, probably bringing singlepayer healthcare along with it. (Or maybe the US gets singlepayer first). This would most likely happen by simple agreement after decades of public pressure which does not yet exist, though of course, if the US went full take-over-the-world-but-without-looking-too-bad, the best bet would be to restart Quebec's separatists, give them enough weaponry to be a problem, then help Canada when that war started, and then have a quiet coup where the government largely agrees to just follow US policy because the US soldiers are right there and making them angry would be a bad idea. Eventually the puppet state status may become inconvenient and be dissolved, making Canada's provinces into northern states.
Comprehensive gun reduction and Demand-side remedying of drug addiction in the US (injection sites, harm reduction, removal of mandatory minimums in favor of only imprisoning suspected suppliers, all that, along with more general social welfare programs) would vastly weaken criminal organizations in Mexico, possibly allowing the currently-only-20-years-out-of-a-one-party-state state to take meaningful action rather than flashy ineffective action against the various criminal organizations. Meanwhile, the US-Canada Alliance ropes the New and Improved Mexico in and helps fix Central America's problems, and in the process likely topples legacies of the Cold War and Chiquita Banana both. Newly stabilized and not dictatorships, the Central American Federal Republic reforms, being recent enough and talked about occasionally. Now there's only six countries on the continent legally. (Mexico, Central America, The US, Canada which is a puppet state now, Panama, and Belize.) Central America invades Belize over a long-standing territory dispute between it and Guatamala, expecting little resistance, and in response, Mexico, one of who's the southern states was part of the original Central American Federal Republic, uses this as an excuse to claim to be the successor state to the whole thing, and the entire central American Republic ends up under the control of Mexico. The US helps, in exchange for authority over Belize, an english-speaking tax haven, and thus the international community is largely not able to object. Ostensibly, Belize is still independent, but in practice, it's fully under US control. It's also possible it ends up as a territory.
To add Panama into one of the two unions, for some reason (probably some overly aggressive nationalist politician) it decides to exert a lot more control over the Panama Canal, grinding international trade to a halt. As a result, several companies buy mercenaries and send them to force the canal open at gunpoint. This eventually results in a short war where Panama is put under the authority of the US or Mexico.
Now there's only two meaningful countries left, and Mexico is smaller and weaker than the US. The main barriers are the language and cultural barriers, but Canada does have a lot more experience than the US at handling language issues, and California, I think New Mexico, and maybe some other US states already have policies of bilingualism, so the language barrier becomes less of a problem. The question of sovereignty does come up, of course, but at this point, all it takes is some missteps by Mexico in dealing with one separatist group or another for the US to do the same thing it did to Canada, but much more forcefully, invoking the specter of national security regarding Panama, whoever has Panama.
Thus the entire continent is effectively under one government, even if Canada and Mexico are ostensibly still independent.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It helps that the western provinces of Canada are far more economically integrated with neighboring US states than with the eastern provinces, due to the Canadian Shield forming a huge geographical barrier (to date, there's only one small highway connecting the two halves of the country). Imagine if some major disaster utterly devastated the eastern provinces, particularly Ontario (alone accounting for 38% of Canada's GDP), such that the western ones had to essentially become extensions of the US just to survive, and by the time the Canadian east has finally gotten back on its feet (albeit very wobbly and reliant on crutches), the west's integration has become too deep for too long to be undone (mainly because the majority don't want it to be reversed, for one reason or another).
All in all, I like the overall idea behind your take on the "pan-North American Manifest Destiny" scenario. I imagine that some megacorporations might help out out of greed, seeing some sort of benefit in helping the US government's ambitions, via using their vast wealth to fund certain groups and individuals in Canada and Mexico to erode any potential obstacles in the path of the "Pan-North American Dream".
Claim the Moon as the "51th State".
(It is absolute insanity, yes, but who is going to stop them if the ones in charge are crazy enough to do it?)
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... What does that have to do with this thread's topic???
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
It did say "do not limit yourself to any kind of scenario" and claiming the moon as another state for future purposes is just within those margins.
As a matter of "Politics & Paperwork" and a large dose of madness included alongside all the potential fallout from doing so on a global scale in the world.
Edited by TitanJump on Sep 3rd 2022 at 6:02:52 PM
The They who said it
Yeah but the OP and thread title are about how North America could become effectively one country, not how the US declares itself the moon king in total contravention of the space treaties and proceeds to Kessler-syndrome space into virtual unusability with satellite wars.
I interpreted it one way, that is all.
...
That said, if the whole north america is the only thing allowed, then they would only start a bunch of pointless conflict, being unable to hold Canada/Mexico for any longer period of time even if they diverted their already stretched thin military to them all together, violate a bunch of treaties, end up condemned by the entire world with economic sanctions included that would shred the american economy and trigger NATO to step in when Canada calls for aid, alongside everyone else sending military aid to Canada and Mexico covertly in order to stop this madness.
In short, US would not benefit in the slightest from turning into a single country across the Northern Continent as a result of a decades-long war with the entire world to get them.
Several problems needs to be identified and then overcome in order to create that kind of America.
Edited by TitanJump on Sep 3rd 2022 at 8:12:03 PM
The They who said it
Not really though, quiet coups and puppet states tend not to get countries into too much trouble. See the US's Government in Afghanistan, which is still internationally recognized as the legitimate government despite well... having been a woefully unstable puppet state almost entirely supported by the US military. That's not to say the Taliban are good, simply that the previous government was completely incapable of functioning without the US there to prevent the taliban from reestablishing its control.
Quiet coups of the kind I describe have historically happened, though in practice they're pretty rare, if just because they're unlikely to happen to anything short of an ally, and allies are often better than simply controlling the territory directly. But it has historically happened. NATO wouldn't question it too hard, considering that NATO is mostly a US partnership. Certainly, Canada is part of it, but the US is the dominant partner. France and the UK, the only other partners with notable militaries, aren't going to worry too much about it, the US has no reason nor real capacity to invade them, and this wasn't formally an invasion or a takeover, it was, in theory, an attempt to fix a resurgent Quebec Separatist movement that ended with the government of Canada even more interested in following the US's lead than they already are. Formally speaking, Canada is still independent, and the government hasn't even significantly changed. Some reports of "US soldiers threatening Canadian government officials" may come out, but it'll pretty quickly be accepted as "who really cares." Canada can't exactly call for help because there was no "tanks rolling down the street of Ottawa", it's just suddenly their army, which integrated heavily with the US's during the Quebec War, is a lot more influential in their politics.
As for Mexico and Central America, that's a bit more up in the air I admit, though the US accidently stabilizing the region with gun control, singlepayer, and evidence-based addiction solutions within the US is relatively plausible, and stepping in to fix Central America would be very easy to spin as legitimate and multilateral if Mexico and the US get on board, because Canada is also there. The Mexico Claim to Central America is a little dubious of course, but the territorial dispute with Belize is real, and Mexico has a vested interest in not letting the RFCA take it over, because they might try to take Mexico's south as formerly a part of the country, and whether the countries end up puppet states or fully integrated into Mexico, in practice, there's still only three countries left in North America. The one member of NATO who might object is the UK, which has interests in Belize, but they'd probably be mostly fine with a US-Run Belize as long as they can keep the special relationship they currently have with it.
Obviously Panama deciding to provoke their quietly expansionist neighbors isn't particularly plausible at this point, but maybe they do it before the RFCA or US-Canada becomes reasonably well understood.
Do keep in mind, Sanctions are not a problem that the US really has to deal with. It's too economically powerful at this time to be effectively sanctioned, and most of the countries that could sanction it are in military alliances that make sanctions unlikely, even when some vaguely expansionist behavior happens. As for military-stretched thin, not really. As long as the coup stays relatively quiet, the US would only need a few thousand troops in Canada working with Canadian Generals happy with their new influence over the Canadian Government, and the same in Mexico. The state of affairs would be pretty much treated as normal, soon enough, and with proper treatment, pay, and healthcare for US Soldiers, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that there'd be enough soldiers to do such a thing and maintain current troop commitments elsewhere, and that these altered borders are not particularly formal. It's simply that Canada's government has Mysteriously For No Discernable Reason been making decisions that erode its legal distinction from the US (somewhat like Belgium and the Netherlands are doing to each others militaries), and Central America is an Extended Multilateral North American Peacekeeping Operation.
It all appears very legitimate internationally, especially with the fact that most of the international press is US-Centric at the moment, and so there wouldn't be too much criticism of the actions, aside from possibly protests for the general refusal to help Canada with its borderline military dictatorship problem.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
You are probably familiar with this one form of Space-Filling Empire: Within a century or two from now, the countries of North America have united into a single superstate that suspiciously seems like (if not explicitly is) just a bigger version of the United States of America. Typically, the sequence of events that led to the creation of such a United States of North America never get elaborated upon when this trope is used; it's just stated to have happened, and the most we get is whether it was done peacefully (which says nothing about it being voluntary) or through military force. And I get why; not every writer has enough motivation to figure out all the societal, economic and political factors that could facilitate or hinder such a scenario coming to pass, and I certainly have no illusions about how controversial the mere idea of a North American supranational union
is IRL, let alone a superstate formed from the USA incorporating the other North American countries into itself.
But why should that stop people from trying to flesh out even the rudiments of such a scenario?
Thus I come here to seek input from the troper hive mind, since my knowledge on anything pertaining to this topic — sociology, economics, politics, history, etc. — is superficial at best, and probably quite deficient if not nonexistent in some areas, and I unfortunately cannot afford the time-consuming task of personally researching every aspect of this subject. Do not limit yourself to any particular kind of scenario, for the kind where the USNA forms gradually through the relevant governments voluntarily acceding into the United States with the backing of a majority of their respective constituents (and that of the US one, of course) would naturally serve well in certain kinds of stories, but not as much in other kinds of stories as the kind where it forms because the United States somehow got into a Manifest Destiny 2.0 phase and exploited Applied Phlebotinum-based military supremacy to conquer the rest of the continent in relatively short order.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.