Perspectives on Invasion: Great Britain, Northern Ireland, United States, Canada, and Australia

Abstract

Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the United States of America (USA), Canada, and Australia share many commonalities. One of the more obvious ones is that all four nations share English as a common language, which is an indication that all four nations share a common British colonial or imperial heritage (Darwin 2007). Interestingly, all four nations are developed nations, and all four share a high standard of living. All four are also to some extent geostrategically linked, with the United Kingdom, the USA, and Canada linked through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the USA, Australia, and New Zealand through the Australian, New Zealand, and the United States (ANZUS) Treaty Alliance (Diamond 1998). All four nations, with occasional exceptions, share a common record of involvement in military conflict, including the two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq, and the Afghanistan War. The common background and strategic orientation of these Anglophone countries therefore suggests a combined analysis.