Bridgewater State University Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University Honors Program Theses and Projects Undergraduate Honors Program 5-10-2016 An Era of Convergence: Joint Defense between the United States and Canada 1949-1963 Melanie Hawes Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.edu/honors_proj Part of the Canadian History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hawes, Melanie. An Era of Convergence: Joint Defense between the United States and Canada 1949-1963. In BSU Honors Program Theses and Projects. Available at: http://vc.edu/honors_proj/159 Copyright © 2016 Melanie Hawes This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
An Era of Convergence: Joint Defense between the United States and Canada 1949-1963 Melanie Hawes Submitted in Partial Completion of the Requirements for Commonwealth Honors in History Bridgewater State University May 10, 2016 Dr. Brian Payne, Thesis Director Dr. Andrew Holman, Committee Member Dr. Paul Rubinson, Committee Member 1 During the Cold War, Canada and the United States worked together to create a mutual defense program to protect the North American continent from a potential Soviet attack.
As the Soviet Union and the United States entered into a nuclear arms race, the military defense of North America became absolutely imperative. By 1962, technology had been developed enabling both super powers to launch missiles over long distances. There was a dramatic shift from air bombers to missiles during the Cold War because missiles could be launched from farther away and had a larger capability for destruction. Canadians and the Americans soon realized that the only way to truly defend the North American continent from Soviet nuclear missiles was to create their own nuclear defense systems.
The newly developed long- range missiles were called inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) because they could be launched over continents having a range between 6,000-9,300 miles. 1 The Soviets likewise developed similar technology, and by 1958, they had the capability to launch an attack on the United States from Soviet soil. This new technology completely revolutionized the way nations’ conceptualized war and also the ways in which nations sought to defend themselves militarily. Despite shared interests in mutual defense, Canadians had a notably different perspective of the Cold War than Americans and played a distinctly different role in the war.
The Canadian Arctic became the central focus of these converging yet distinct ideas of North American defense. The quickest route for any assault upon the United States would have been over the Canadian Arctic. Inevitably, this placed Canada in the middle of a potential nuclear holocaust as tensions continued to ramp up between 1949 and 1963. Like all nations in the emerging bipolar world constructed by U.
and Soviet policies, Canadian statesmen had to make important and difficult geopolitical decisions. Due to the fact that the nations shared a border and similar 1 National Park Service. "Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.gov/mimi/learn/historyculture/intercontinental-ballistic-missiles. 2 political perspectives the U.
and Canada were natural allies. But this natural alliance did not always translate into smooth bilateral action or even mutual diplomatic agreement during key moments of international tension. Working through these tensions remained a pressing issue in North American diplomacy during the Cold War. The joint defense between these two North American countries is historically significant because despite the weakness of personal diplomacy between the nations’ leaders, state diplomacy was remarkably successful in protecting the continent from perceived threats and in defusing the tensions of the Cold War.
Building a Partnership: Origins of Joint Defense between the United States and Canada The cooperative tradition between Canada and the United States dates back to the early twentieth century when the United States and Great Britain began a series of international talks to discharge festering conflicts between the two powers on the North American continent. This cooperation between the United States and Great Britain did not always translate into comfortable relations between the United States and Canada. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Canada was fearful of the United States because of its expansionist tradition (Manifest Destiny) and the expressed desires of the United States to become the dominant continental power. The tension between the United States and Canada was more than just diplomatic.
Canada feared “Americanization” of their English speaking and French speaking cultures. Canada had only become an independent nation in 1867 thus it was far weaker economically and politically than their neighbor, thus making it vulnerable to an invasion if the United States sought to extend its borders northward. Canadians speculated that the United States would try to invade Canada since as of World War I they were an expansionist country. Knowing that the 3 U.
had a larger population, stronger economy and had a history of aggression, Canadians had much to be concerned about. A 1921 Canadian Army record reported the following defense scheme in the event of “probable action of the United States”: The main objective of the United States force would undoubtedly be Montreal and on to Ottawa. The next important objective of the United States would be the occupation of the Ontario Peninsula including the cities of Hamilton and Toronto…the grain growing Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta which now have a large percentage of Americans, are especially attractive to the United States, and there is just a possibility that they might make the conquest of these Provinces the ultimate objective of their campaign… 2 The fact that Canada’s Army drew up military counter measures is evidence of the fear that Canada had of the United States. 3 According to Canadian historians John H.
Thompson and Stephen J. Randall in Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies, in the early twentieth century, “British strategic planners viewed war with the United States ‘a contingency which, however improbable, is not impossible,’ but they secretly conceded that a successful defense of Canada was impossible.” 4 Even a powerful naval country such as Britain knew that they could not possibly help Canada defend itself against the United States if the U. were to invade. However, the assumed failure to defend Canada is not as important as the fact that both Britain and Canada felt that some kind of defense was nonetheless necessary.
The fear of a potential invasion from the United States, as it had done in the War of 1812, became a barrier that the U. and Canada had to overcome in order for joint defense to become a reality. World War II became an open stage for Canada to begin overcoming its fear of the United States. With the whole world in chaos, the United States was the least of Canada’s fears.
2 "Extracts from "Defence Scheme No. In Defence of Canada: From the Great War to the Great Depression. 3 It is necessary to note that the legitimacy of this speculation is hard for historians to determine because Canada technically still had these defense plans on the books. Thompson, and Stephen J.
Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies, 2nd ed. 4 Due to its historic relationship with Great Britain, Canada was a key conduit for the cooperation between Great Britain and the United States during WWII. Canada’s role as an independent voice in building a cooperative relationship with the United States emerged in a fuller force with the outbreak of World War II. This wartime work eventually had important implications for the defense of North America and the rising importance of the Arctic in geopolitics.
Prior to WWII, Canada did not see a need to defend its northern Arctic border. From a military point of view, the land in the Arctic was useless and its climate could prevent anyone from trying to capture the territory even if it did have intrinsic value. The authors of Arctic Front describe Lester Pearson’s “scorched ice” approach to defending the Arctic, immediately following WWII. Lester Pearson was Minister of External Affairs during Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s administration.
He later became Diefenbaker’s successor and served as Prime Minister from 1963-1968. Pearson advocated for the following approach to defending the Arctic: “If you left the Arctic alone, as a deserted wasteland of ice and snow, it would be useless to the enemy, which would have to fight the natural elements simply to survive, never mind an attack.” 5 It was not until the Soviet Union and the United States entered into a nuclear arms race that Canada found itself with a defenseless northern flank. In 1940, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and U. Roosevelt met in Ogdensburg, New York, where they agreed to a mutual defense policy known as the Ogdensburg Agreement.
The Ogdensburg Agreement was one of the first joint defense actions taken between Canada and the United States out of which the Permanent Joint Board on Defence was created. In the agreement, the nations agreed that, “This Permanent Joint Board on Defence shall commence immediate studies relating to the sea, land and air problems, including 5 As quoted in Kevin S. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison, and Greg Poelzer, Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2008) 66.
5 personnel and material. It will consider in the broad sense of defense of the north half of the Western Hemisphere.” 6 The creation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence created a precedent in the defense policy that the United States and Canada adhered to during the Cold War years as they sought to defend themselves from the Soviet Union. 7 In a 1960 journal entry in the Canadian International, Keenleyside recounted the political relationship that developed between the United States and Canada during WWII. Although the time period precedes the Cold War, this journal entry is helpful to understanding the preexisting military cooperation between the two allies.
In this article Keenleyside notes that in August of 1938 in Woodridge, Prime Minister King vowed a Canadian alliance to the United States stating: We too have our obligations as a good and friendly neighbour, and one of them is to see that, at our own instance, our country is made as immune from attack or possible invasion as we can reasonably be expected to make it and that, should the occasion ever arise, enemy forces should not be able to pursue their way, either by land, sea or air, to the United States across Canadian territory. 8 This statement was essential to creating a cooperative political relationship between the two countries. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to King’s speech in an address he gave at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1938: “I give to you assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by 6 H. "The Canada-United States Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 1940-1945," International Journal 16, no.
‘Keenleyside, Hugh Llewellyn, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries General of International Organizations, edited by Bob Reinalda, Kent J. Kille and Jaci Eisenberg, www.nl/fm/iobio 8 Keenleyside, "The Canada-United States Permanent Joint Board on Defence, 1940-1945," 52. 6 any other Empire.” 9 WWII marked the realization that the two countries had the joint responsibility to defend the western hemisphere. During WWII, Canada and the United States utilized their new joint defense to bring an end to German and Japanese aggression.
Canada provided everything from military supplies to ground troops to aid the Allied effort against Germany in the Atlantic theater. One of its most notable contributions was its role in the invasion of Normandy during the D-Day landings of June 1944 which 14,000 Canadians stormed Juno Beach and helped the Allies push further into German occupied France. 10 Canada also partnered with the United States in the atomic energy research known as the Manhattan Project, which developed the notorious atomic bomb that helped end the war in Japan in 1945. 11 Canada’s involvement in this research was defined in the Quebec Agreement of 1943 between the United States and the United Kingdom that established the nuclear weapons program (known as Tube Alloys in the UK).
