Hedonism
Cuddly Puppy
Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Nanaimo, BC
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 Canada: Swept Away by the Cold War, 1947-1957
Canada: Swept Away by the Cold War, 1947-1957
In the years between 1947 and 1957, following the end of World War II, Canada found itself in an increasingly dangerous position, straddling the polar boundary between the United States and the USSR. Despite the cool, muted camaraderie of the allied struggle with Nazi Germany, the two future superpowers found themselves diametrically opposed ideologically, geographically, and militarily. Canada's role in this conflict was very clear: it was forced to align itself with the United States in the Cold War despite the misgivings of its leaders over U.S. influnece and its impact on Canadian sovereignty. Economic and military dependence on the United States, anti-Communist sentiment throughout Canada and its government, and the false perception that Canada could broker peace betwen the two blocs led Canada to pursue policies that placed it firmly in America's sphere of influence. It was inevitable that the two countries became closely allied, militarily, in the defense of North America and the containment of communism abroad.
The defense of North America was the key issue in deciding Canada's place as a staunch military ally of America. During the Cold War, the greatest fear to both the U.S. and the Soviets was nuclear attack, and until the Cuban Missle Crisis, the States was most vulnerable to missles launched across the North Pole... and Canada as well. Canada was also the weakest point of entry for an assault on North America by conventional ground forces, sharing the longest undefended border in the world with the U.S. This made Canada an integral part of American defense planning, regardless of Canadian sentiment on the issue. Mackenzie King knew well that Canada's position in those plans would not be entirely self-determined: "if the American's felt that security required it [they] would take peaceful possession of part of Canada." The U.S. could well have taken over the northern expanse of Canada by force as well. Despite the fact that Canada's military budget had increased eightfold between 1948 and 1964, the United States still had a military budget 35 times larger.
Canada really had no choice but to make compromises with the United States on the matter of mutual defense. America's attitude was often dictated by Canada's strategic importance rather than its significance as an ally in this manner; an aide of John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State, recalled Dulles' assertion that "[Canada's] a very important piece of real estate and should be humoured along." Several pieces of its "very important real estate" that Canada could not protect were bases in Newfoundland that Britain had leased to the U.S. during World War II, before Newfoundland had entered Confederation; there, Americans held many extraterritorial rights that circumvented Canadian jurisdiction. In effect, those bases were American principalities, and there was very little that Canada could legally do to change that, short of re-negotiating a treaty it was not a party to.
Canada was also cajoled into many of the defense agreements that it entered into with the United States, including the construction of its air defense radar systems: the Pinetree Network, the Mid-Canada Line, and the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line. Canada, already spending massive amounts on rearmament, didn't have the funds to build the DEW Line itself, let alone a reasonable number of naval and army bases in order to ensure the security of North America. The DEW Line, constructed entirely by the Americans, was run as if it were part of America, despite the best efforts of the Canadian government to keep the territory under Canadian control. Canadian visitors to the DEW Line even had to obtain clearance from Washington rather than Ottawa in order to land there. Canada could not have defended its expansive Arctic territory well enough to satisfy the U.S. Pentagon's demand for American military presence within its borders. America had promised to defend Canada in the case of (implied Soviet) attack, and it fully intended to go above and beyond the call of duty. One Canadian colonel remarked, "Canadians are obliged to accept a larger measure of dictation on defense matters from Washington than they were ever willing to take from London." According to Frank Underhill, a Canadian historian, "We became dependent upon the United States for our security. We have, therefore, no choice but to follow American leadership."
Canada's close physical proximity to the United States also contributed to strengthening economic ties between the two countries which, in the context of American investment and interdependence, further strengthened the pull for Canada to enite with the States militarily. Approximately 70 percent of Canada's total imports came directly from the United States during World War II and those levels were sustained after the war had ended - then the highest of any bilateral trade in the world. After World War II, Canadian exports to Britain declined slowly, from 26 percent in 1946 to 16 percent in 1951. British citizens, their country ravanged by carpet bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II, simply didn't have the disposable income to spend on Canadian goods. This left Canada "no choice other than to exploit the one reliable market it did have, the United States," which played into the hands of U.S. economic policy of "knitting the two countries together", historian Brian Muirhead asserts.
Accordingly, U.S. investment in Canada rose sharply from US$3.51 billion in 1950 to US$8.33 billion towards the end of 1957, roughly three-quarters of which was in manufacturing ($3.1 billion), oil ($2.15 billion), and mining and smelting ($1 billion). This accounted for 70 percent of all foreign investment in Canada, and all in industries that were key to war production. The American "war machine" was supported by an increasing Canadian industrial base, which exported large amounts of lead, zinc, oil, and particularly nickel, upon which the U.S. depended.
Even without considering their military interests and might, Canada was so closely tied with the United States in economic terms tthat it would be impossible for Prime Ministers King, St. Laurent, Pearson, and Diefenbaker to ignore American overtures without repercussion. Pearson, External Affairs Minister during the Korean War, had to keep in mind that there was "the possibility that if we do not demonstrate our fundamental solidarity [in the war effort] we should inevitably find it more difficult to get a favourable treatment in procurement and other problems." In other words, if Canada did not follow America's lead, their reluctance would be remembered when it came time to renegotiate trade treaties and other terms. Not only was the United States' military agenda far too strong for Canada to deny; they also had a firm economic grip on their northern neighbour which forced Canada to acquiesce to closer military cooperation than it otherwise would.
Canada's subordinate position to the United States economically and militarily played only a partial role in Canada's internal political decisions to become a military satellite of America; anti-Communism and hopes of meeting halfway with the U.S. on matters of mutual defense shaped Canada's military ties with the United States. Many of Canada's foreign policy issues were swayed by a genuine fear of growing Soviet influence and the expansion of Communism in the Orient. Fear of Communism in Canada was greater than is popularly held - Canada was the only Western democracy to declare its Communist party illegal while the Soviet Union was still an ally.
Although few Canadians were convinced that Soviet Russia was likely to invade, the Americans were wary enough that they began to make plans with Canada, even before the end of World War II, to ensure the security of North America. The Ogdensburg Agreement in 1940 set the precedent for Canadian/American military cooperation; soon the Permanent Joint Defense Board was created in 1945, which played a "very significant role in policy formation" during the Cold War by planneing many of the defense projects undertaken on Canadian soil. At the height of the Cold War in 1954, it was almost inconceivable that the Canadian government, or anyone else, could oppose an important anti-communist policy advocate by the U.S. government.
The precedent for cooperation between Canada and the United States was unavoidably pushed even further, with the Pinetree, Mid-Canada, and DEW radar systems constructed and finally merged into NORAD in 1957, despite the misgivings of the Canadian Prime Minister. King was even "half convinced that continentalism for defense was reasonable," perhaps inevitable. It wasn't an extremely poor or unprecedented choice of policy; Canada had accepted protection from Britain against either France or the United States for most of its existence, and although it now had no choice in the matter, it was in Canada's best interests to accept protection from the U.S. against Soviet Russia.
Indeed, creeping uncertainty of the agenda of the USSR and other Communist countries had characterized the Canadian govnerment throughout the twentieth century. King, St. Laurent, and Diefenbaker were all stalwart anti-Communists, as were their ministers of External Affairs, but aside from that, successive Canadian governments also believed that by cooperating with the U.S. in matters of war, defense, and alliance, they could moderate the conflict and perhaps at the same time protect Canadian interests. This drew Canada even further into the sphere of American military influence. There was no question that Communism would have to be contained in some manner; to the Canadian government, it was only a question of how it was to be accomplished and by whom.
In this atmosphere, it is hardly surprising that towards the start of the Cold War, there was popular support for many initiatives that the U.S. took to those ends. The North Atlanetic Treaty Organization (NATO) was widely supported in Canada, with a few exceptions. Further initiatives to place permanent troops in Europe (Germany particularly), was ment with little opposition. In fact, the Canadian government was even criticized for not placing a higher priority on European involvement. The fact that the United States had a monopoly on the atomic bomb and a far more developed industrial base than the USSR was not a consideration. Pearson's hope was that NATO would not just be a traditional military alliance; he hoped that it would become an economic trading community that would partially shift Canada's economic dependence from the United States to Europe. Unfortunately, the advent of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet nuclear bomb, and the Korean War hardened NATO's emphasis as a military bulwark against Communism, and dashed Canada's hopes for lessening its economic dependence on the States.
Ironically, NATO only increased Canada's dependence on AMerica (NATO being a U.S.-dominated alliance), rather than on the British Commonwealth and the rest of Europe. America's military influence over Canada was increased through NATO when the pact was reorganized to form an "integrated command", under an American general, who had the authority to autonomously force Canadian troops to fight, without regard to Parliament, in the event of a European war. America had, in effect, taken control over Canadian troops stationed in Europe under NATO, in the event of a European war.
During the Korean War, the Canadian government, concerned with maintaining a balanced budget and reducing military expenditures, only relunctantly decided to join the war effort. Although many Canadian officials, including Lester Pearson, thought that Canada could "perform a mediatory middle-power role" and restrain the U.S. (hopefully preventing China from entering the war), Canadian attempts at brokerage were wasted breath. Far from actually exerting influence upon the policies of the United States, the Canadian government lost control to the U.S. by entering the war in the first place. Its troops were called upon by the American generals in order to put down an uprising in a POW camp on Koje Island, without the express permission to do so. McArthur's foray past the Yalu River brought the Chinese into the war, and shortly thereafter Canadian Defense Minister Brooke Claxton "confided in a friend that the war was unwinnable, and that the U.S. direction 'now begins to terrify [him]'." Canada had been drawn into precisely the opposite role it had intended to assume when it entered the war.
Canada's role in the Cold War was one in which it could not avoid being pressured, cajoled, duped, and ultimately deluded by its own perception of itseld as a middle power to take an active role as an American military satellite against Communism. It depended on the U.S. economically, and since it could not defend its borders to American satisfaction, also became dependent on the United States for military protection as well. Continental defense literally brought Canada into an American military embrace. Anti-Communist sentiment within and without the Canadian government fueled the drive for Canada to accept further American military initiatives, but its leaders rather naively assumed that Canada could moderate America's military excesses, which served only to draw Canada further into the Korean War and NATO. In both instances, Canada lost control of its own miltiary involvement in the Cold War. Futile struggle against an unwavering American military agenda characterized Canada's true role in the early Cold War, in the decade between 1947 and 1957 - that of a reluctant pawn.
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 Prying open my third eye, one sliver at a time...
[This message has been edited by Hedonism (edited 06-16-2001).]
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06-17-2001 03:06 AM
