American National Security And Economic Relations With Canada 1945 1954

Aronsen draws on recently declassified documents in Ottawa and Washington to provide a reassessment of Canada's special relationship with the U.S. Toward this end, detailed new information is provided about Canada's contribution to the creation of the postwar economic order from the Bretton Woods Agreement to GATT. Canada's cooperation was rewarded by special economic concessions including the extension of the Hyde Park agreement in 1945, the inclusion of the off-shore purchases clause to the Marshall Plan, and Article II of the NATO Treaty. After the outbreak of the Korean War, Canada's resources played a crucial role in the production of weapons systems for the new air/atomic strategic doctrine. Several policies were adopted to facilitate the expansion of Canadian defense production, notably the relaxation of regulations on technology transfer; the encouragement of private sector investment; and the negotiation of long-term contracts at above-market prices. In the midst of these unprecendented peacetime developments Time Magazine observed that Canada had become America's Indispensable Ally.

Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount examine details of White House policy from 1945 to the 1980s to assess the extent to which the United States could be said to have had a Canada policy. They challenge the popular nationalist view that Canada has been treated as peripheral and dependent, but also counter the opposing view that Washington has respected Canadian advice and benefitted from it. Instead, they argue that for the most part Canada has mattered little in Washington and that America's Canada policy is largely an ad hoc affair.

In 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts proclaimed at the University of New Brunswick that "Canada and the United States have carefully maintained the good fences that help make them good neighbours." He could not have foreseen that his presidency would be marked not just by some of the tensest moments of the Cold War but also by the most contentious moments in the Canadian-American relationship. Indeed, the 1963 Canadian federal election was marked by charges that the US government had engineered a plot to oust John Diefenbaker, Canada's nationalist prime minister. Camelot and Canada explores political, economic, and military elements in Canada-US relations in the early 1960s. Asa McKercher challenges the prevailing view that US foreign policymakers, including President Kennedy, were imperious in their conduct toward Canada. Rather, he shows that the period continued to be marked by the special diplomatic relationship that characterized the early postwar years. Even as Diefenbaker's government pursued distinct foreign and economic policies, American officials acknowledged that Canadian objectives legitimately differed from their own and adjusted their policies accordingly. Moreover, for all its bluster, Ottawa rarely moved without weighing the impact that its initiatives might have on Washington. At the same time, McKercher illustrates that there were significant strains on the bilateral relationship, which occurred as a result of mounting doubts in Canada about US leadership in the Cold War, growing Canadian nationalism, and Canadian concern over their country's close economic, military, and cultural ties with the United States. While personal clashes between the two leaders have become mythologized by historians and the public alike, the special relationship between their governments continued to function.

Center of Military History Publication 70-101- 1.

This study evaluates the health of the U.S.-Canadian defense industrial relationship, which is critically important as the U.S. Department of Defense expands the national technology and industrial base.

A megaproject half a century in the making, the planning and building of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project is one of the defining episodes in North American history. Possibly the largest construction undertaking in Canadian history, and one of the most ambitious borderlands projects ever embarked upon by two countries, it also required decades of negotiation and the controversial relocation of thousands of people. Negotiating a River looks at the profound impacts of this megaproject, from the complex diplomatic negotiations, political manoeuvring, and environmental diplomacy to the implications on national identities and transnational relations.

No two nations have exchanged natural resources, produced transborder environmental agreements, or cooperatively altered ecosystems on the same scale as Canada and the United States. Environmental and energy diplomacy have profoundly shaped both countries’ economies, politics, and landscapes for over 150 years. Natural Allies looks at the history of US-Canada relations through an environmental lens. From fisheries in the late nineteenth century to oil pipelines in the twenty-first century, Daniel Macfarlane recounts the scores of transborder environmental and energy arrangements made between the two nations. Many became global precedents that influenced international environmental law, governance, and politics, including the Boundary Waters Treaty, the Trail Smelter case, hydroelectric megaprojects, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements. In addition to water, fish, wood, minerals, and myriad other resources, Natural Allies details the history of the continental energy relationship – from electricity to uranium to fossil fuels –showing how Canada became vital to American strategic interests and, along with the United States, a major international energy power and petro-state. Environmental and energy relations facilitated the integration and prosperity of Canada and the United States but also made these countries responsible for the current climate crisis and other unsustainable forms of ecological degradation. Looking to the future, Natural Allies argues that the concept of national security must be widened to include natural security – a commitment to public, national, and international safety from environmental harms, especially those caused by human actions.