"It was the Kennedy government that rendered our joint arrangements ineffective. We were not a satellite state at the beck and call of an imperial master."
John Diefenbaker, Memoirs
I was surprised – pleasantly surprised, for once – when Prime Minister Paul Martin turned down President George W. Bush’s request that Canada support the proposed Ballistic Missile Defence system (BMD). After all, just two days earlier Frank McKenna, newly appointed ambassador to the U.S., had more or less stated that Canada was already with the program. Not so, said Martin. "BMD is not where we will concentrate our efforts," he told reporters. "Instead, we will act both alone and with our neighbours on defence priorities outlined in yesterday’s budget."
Responses to Martin’s announcement last week fell, predictably, into two mutually opposed camps. On the one hand, there were those who heralded his stance as a symbolic gesture of Canadian sovereignty. We, and not some other power, would determine our military strategy.
Others, however, argued that Martin had actually compromised Canada’s independence. "We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up sovereignty – its seat at the table – to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada," said Paul Celluci, U.S. ambassador to Canada. Michael Ignatieff, invited to deliver the keynote address to last week’s Liberal Party convention, made much the same point. "We must not walk away from the table," he told delegates. "We must be there, at the table, defending what only we can defend."
Given that the $10 billion BMD is now a done deal, what should Canada’s role in the defence of North America be? By refusing to endorse this particular program, has Canada effectively given up the right to have any say in the matter? Or is Paul Martin right when he maintains that, "If there is going to be an American missile going off somewhere over Canadian airspace, I think Canada should be at the table making the decisions"?
According to one opinion poll in the National Post this week, 37 per cent of Canadians now believe U.S.-Canada relations to be either "the worst" or "among the worst" they’ve ever been. More than half (54 per cent) say they’re "worse than average." Yet in fact, this latest disagreement over the preservation of North American security is entirely in keeping with how Canada and the U.S. have "co-operated" in that task over the past 60 years or so. There has always been friction between the two nations on this question. Indeed, if seen in historical context, the latest clash over BMD appears as little more than a minor spat.
The roots of Canadian-U.S. military co-operation go back to the Second World War. In 1940, Prime Minister Mackenzie King and President Franklin Roosevelt met at Ogdensburg, New York where they signed an agreement to co-ordinate defence systems. At the same time, the two men established a Permanent Joint Board of Defence – the word "permanent" signifying a long-term commitment to continental security.
Thus it was that King effectively severed Canada’s historical ties to Britain in matters of defence. From now on, and for better or worse, we were in bed with the Americans.
The onset of the Cold War soon made this evident. In 1954, Canada and the U.S. agreed to set up the Distant Early Warning (DEW) system of radar stations along the Arctic coast. Finished in 1957, DEW spanned more than 8,000 kilometres (most if it through Canada) from Alaska to Baffin Island, with 22 stations positioned to detect incoming Russian bombers. The only problem was that by then, the development of intercontinental and submarine-launched missiles had effectively rendered DEW obsolete from day one.
And so it was that NORAD – the North American Air Defence Agreement – was born in 1957. This first attempt to co-ordinate Canadian and U.S. air forces was hastily signed by Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, amid cries of outrage from opposition Liberals, and was formalized the following year. Its joint command was, significantly, based in Colorado Springs.
Within months, the implications of NORAD became clear. In the fall of 1958, Diefenbaker announced that Canada would accept the deployment of 56 U.S. Bomarc missiles at sites in Ontario and Quebec. What he neglected to mention was that they were to be armed with nuclear warheads. When this fact became known in 1960, public and political opposition to the idea pressured Diefenbaker into reversing his decision: Canada would accept the missiles, but not their nuclear payload.
American-Canadian relations had begun to crumble. With the election of John F. Kennedy in 1961, they would fall apart almost completely. From the outset, J.F.K. regarded Diefenbaker as an old, weak politician and was determined, in his own word, to "push" him on key defence issues.
Then came the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, a standoff between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. that brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. On October 22, Kennedy gave Diefenbaker less than two hours warning that he intended to mount a naval blockade of Cuba and asked that Canada raise its own alert status to "Defcon 3" in preparation for war. Led by a dithering Diefenbaker, the Conservative cabinet debated the request for two days, further angering and convincing many Americans that Canada simply could not be counted on.
This point never really got resolved. Finally ousted in 1963, Diefenbaker was succeeded by Lester B. Pearson’s Liberals, who soon reversed policy and accepted the nuclear warheads. Yet less than a decade later, Pierre Trudeau would overturn this decision and remove all nuclear weapons from Canada. Instead, he proposed that Canada carve out a "middle way" between the two Cold War superpowers.
The fallout over Martin’s refusal last week, therefore, is nothing new. Americans like ambassador Cellucci may well be "surprised" and "perplexed" by Canada’s decision, but they shouldn’t be. The two nations have never found co-operation over defence to be an easy matter, as Diefenbaker learned the hard way.
For taking the stand he did last week, I wish Paul Martin better luck. |
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