Why is America almost impossible to invade?
The short answer
Geography does most of the defending. Two huge oceans, the Rocky Mountains, thousands of miles of interior, a giant river network and friendly neighbors leave an invader no easy way in.If you had to invade the United States, where would you even start? Look at a map and every option runs into a wall, sometimes literally.
Two oceans
The Atlantic is about 3,000 miles wide between the US and Europe, and the Pacific is over 5,000 miles from California to Japan. Any invading force would have to cross all that open water, carrying every soldier, tank and gallon of fuel, before it even reached the coast.
A mountain wall
Land on the West Coast and you hit the Rocky Mountains, a chain about 3,000 miles long that runs from Canada down to New Mexico. Moving an army and its supplies through those passes would be slow, exposed and easy to block.
Depth
The US is about 2,800 miles wide. An invader could capture an entire coastline and still be over a thousand miles from the industrial heartland, with the Great Plains in between.
The hidden advantage: rivers
The Mississippi and its tributaries, including the Missouri and the Ohio, tie the middle of the country together. Altogether the US has about 25,000 miles of navigable inland waterways, so defenders could move food, fuel and equipment cheaply while an attacker struggled on land.
Friendly neighbors
To the north is Canada and to the south is Mexico, both close allies and trading partners. There's no hostile country next door to launch a land invasion from.
Wait, what?
The last foreign army to capture Washington, D.C. was the British, in 1814. They burned the White House and the Capitol.
Did your state make the list? Tell us in the comments on the Short.
Watch the ShortSources: US Army Corps of Engineers (inland waterways); US Geological Survey; National Park Service history of the War of 1812.