The Measure of a Friend

A Comparison of Cold War Canadian Attitudes Toward Military Collaboration with the United States

Abstract

The US-Canada relationship is at once perhaps the closest between two nations and one of the most misunderstood. Analysed here from a Canadian perspective, it is evident that there are two conflicting mythologies about the bilateral relationship. One holds that Canada is at risk of being increasingly drawn into the US’s orbit, losing sovereignty slowly as aspects of Canada’s state structure are absorbed into US control. The other holds that Canada and the United States have the closest relationship between two sovereign nations. The purpose of this paper is to find the truth between these two clichés. In doing so, it analyses the approaches of two different Prime Ministers, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, as they pertain to the bilateral relationship. During the government of these two men, they were both faced with a request by the Americans for cooperation in a military research project. In their approaches, it can be concluded that the Canadian-American relationship is more transactional than either cliché would suggest, as well as more constrained than the “longest undefended border” cliché.