Headscratchers / We Stand on Guard

• Where is the rest of the international community in all of this? Has Canada fallen so far in the estimation of the world at large that no one thinks an invasion and twelve-year occupation are at all troubling? Are they simply playing bureaucratic games in the United Nations? Is the US being embargoed? Are other nations covertly supplying resistance groups? Is everyone too scared of a trigger-happy United States?
  • If the parents' discussion in the prologue is any indication, the rest of the world is too fractured to care. With references to Hanguk (presumably North Korea took over South Korea), Cuba being allied with Greece, and global warming causing worldwide instability, no one's in much of a position to do (or even want to do) anything. Even if the US straight out said they took Canada for its water because of the drought, who's in a position to attack? Greenland?
    • Indeed, if America hasn't lost its position as world superpower, no country would attack or even could. Russia might be able to launch a far east/west coast invasion, but what would they gain?
  • There is a mention of fear that the insurgents will present their side of the story to "some U.N. inspector, or worse, the press", which suggests the international community has some teeth, although the administration is more worried about the American people sympathizing with the Canadians.
  • It's also worth noting that there is some ambiguity presented over who, exactly, is at fault here. While the Canadian characters certainly think of themselves as the victims, and not entirely unreasonably, the footage of the Canadian general confessing to the attack on the White House seems to suggest that they genuinely did start the war, and there are some hints that Canada turned increasingly isolationist and hostile towards the United States in the years between now and the events of the story. While this could, of course, just be American propaganda, it's also possible that that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, America's actions genuinely are based on a legitimate casus belli.