Preface

The origins of this book can be traced to many of the principal works in the field of Canadian security, works that have largely assumed Canada was either too weak and/or too disinterested to examine issues of strategy during the Cold War.Unable to identify a national Canadian defence policy, the authors of these studies concluded that Canadians simply accepted the analysis and strategic conceptual frameworks identified and articulated by our alliance partners.In spite of the widespread acceptance of this argument, however, little evidence has been offered to support it.Based on documents declassified for this study, this book examines how Canadian defence officials (assisted by those in the Department of External Affairs) approached some of the critical defence issues of the 1950s and early 1960s.There are several reasons why this time frame was chosen.Most crucially, the period comprised the years in which the general tone of the Cold War was established for the subsequent two and a half decades.At its start, US-Soviet relations, while tense, had not yet deteriorated to open hostility, and the glow of wartime cooperation, while fading, had not disappeared altogether.Thirteen years later, East-West relations had gone through an extraordinary period of sustained tension, climaxed by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, an event that convinced policy makers on both sides that more accommodative policies needed to be introduced and implemented.Thus, by 1963, the Cold War was ending its first cycle and would soon enter a prolonged period of détente.The period was also chosen because Canada was a critical Western actor during these years, not as powerful, to be sure, as the United States but quite firmly placed in a "middle" group of countries that included Britain, France, and West Germany.In the subsequent four decades, Canada's status, in the opinion of many observers, has declined -perhaps significantly.Indeed, many pinpoint the start of this decline to the series of defence crises in the late 1950s and early 1960s, years that saw Canada negotiate an air defence agreement with the United States, debate the pros and cons Preface vii

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