Pearson And Canada S Role In Nuclear Disarmament And Arms Control Negotiations 1945 1957

Lester Pearson was Minister for External Affairs between 1948 and 1957. During this time Canada was a member of two successive United Nations commissions on eliminating or controlling nuclear arms with the United States and the Soviet Union as the main negotiators. The goal of these discussions was to reach an agreement on general principles that reflected the strategic needs of each side, rather than on the technical details necessary for a treaty. While the United States and the Soviet Union played the largest role in the negotiations, two other major powers, Britain and France, allies of the Americans, were also at the bargaining table. Canada was the only middle power to participate in all negotiations.

In Pearson and Canada's Role in Nuclear Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations Joseph Levitt traces the history of these negotiations from the Canadian diplomatic perspective. He analyses the various proposals and documents the reactions of Pearson and his colleagues. Levitt reveals Pearson's own view of the strategic stalemate between the USSR and the United States -- Pearson did not believe that an open and liberal society such as the United States would ever launch an unprovoked offensive on the USSR; he thought instead that the danger of a major military confrontation arose only from the possibility that the Soviet Union might attack. Consequently the main thrust of Canadian diplomatic activity in these negotiations was not prevention of an American arms build-up but support of a strategy which would compel the USSR to accept an agreement that would benefit the Americans militarily or, failing that, to hold the Soviets responsible for the impasse in the talks and thus win the all-important propaganda war.

How could you and your family survive a nuclear war? From 1945 onwards, the Canadian government developed civil defence plans and encouraged citizens to join local survival corps. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil defence program was widely mocked, and the public was still vastly unprepared for nuclear war. An expos? of the challenges of educating the public on the threat of nuclear annihilation, Give Me Shelter provides a well-grounded explanation of why Canada’s civil defence strategy ultimately failed. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Canada’s Cold War home front.

The people, forces, and events that have shaped post-war Canada

The nuclear issue was a minor political matter when John Diefenbaker became prime minister in 1957. By 1963, it served as a catalyst for his defeat, with many attributing his demise to the indecision with which he handled it. Patricia McMahon tells a more nuanced story in Essence of Indecision.

the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 quickly ushered in a popular and political movement toward nuclear disarmament. Across the globe, heads of state, high-ranking ministers, and bureaucrats led intense efforts to achieve effective disarmament agreements. Ultimately these efforts failed. In The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, David Tal offers a detailed analysis of U.S. policy from 1945 to the summer of 1963, exploring the reasons for failure and revealing the complex motivations that eventually led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty. While previous books have focused on the policies of specific administrations, Tal’s is the first to consider negotiations as an evolving phenomenon that preoccupied three presidents, from Truman to Kennedy. Drawing on extensive archival research, the author examines the profound dilemma faced by leaders on all sides—forced by political pressure to engage in negotiations whose success they saw as injurious to national interests. Far from believing that the nuclear arms race would inevitably lead to war, the United States regarded nuclear weapons as the greatest guarantee that war would not happen.

This book represents one of the first comparative studies of international treaty ratification processes in multiple issue areas. It employs the comparative case study method, drawing on original research, elite interviews, and discursive analyses of government documents in Europe, Australia, and North America.