Is Canada just a footnote to American history, the pleasant but boring “neighbour to the north”? Americans seem to think so and many Canadians buy into the story. Now a leading U.S. historian and strategic thinker, Eliot Cohen, argues an entirely different narrative. In a new book out this week, Cohen says the distinctive way that Americans wage war originated not in their bloody Civil War or even in the world wars, but “in a protracted contest with our most enduring and effective enemy of all: Canada.”

Really? Little old us? Cohen makes a persuasive case that “for two centuries, Canada was the greatest threat to England’s American colonies and the young United States.” In what the native people of the day called “the Great Warpath” in northern New England and New York, Americans learned to confront state-sponsored terrorism (Indians allied with the French), conduct special operations in harsh territory (the northern forests), and carry out operations mixing professional warriors and citizen soldiers. They also learned a brutal form of combat far removed from the set-piece battles of Europe.

Most interestingly, when the American colonies invaded Canada in 1775, they came to “liberate” Quebec, distributing pamphlets that declared: “You have been conquered into liberty.” Quebecers sent them packing, of course. But Americans have been trying to conquer other peoples into liberty ever since. As Cohen writes, realpolitik and idealism have always been deeply intertwined in U.S. warfare. And they learned it fighting – and mostly being defeated by – Canadians.