what would you do if they came to take the canal? would you fight? i mean there's not a snowballs chance in hell you could do anything against the us.  i have thought about the situation. i think it's clear that you can't give in to their demands, these fuckers are like a shark when someone puts a pint of blood in the water. my strategy would be the following: mine the whole canal with an overkill amount of explosives and leave them there as a life insurance. don't threaten to blow it up every five minutes like a moron, just place them there and declare that this is a last resort thing against a foreign invasion.  the swiss know that they can't really withstand any large scale invasion against their country, so they mined their important roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure. invaders come - bombs go boom.
Germany