Foreign Policy: Friends and Allies (Mostly)

• Pages: 263-294

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Foreign Policy: Friends and

Allies (Mostly)

Introduction

Where foreign policy is concerned, Canada and the United States

have been friends and allies — mostly. e twentieth century and

early twenty-f‌irst century saw the two countries move closer and

closer in a commonality of interests regarding the outside world.

But irritants and disagreements arose from time to time that have

tested the warmth of the relationship. is chapter explores some

contemporary foreign policy relations focusing on the wars in

Afghanistan and Iraq, border security, Arctic sovereignty, pipelines,

and relations with Russia and China. But f‌irst, it looks at the gen-

eral trends in foreign policy positions over the history of relations

between the two countries to determine the extent to which their

foreign policies are the same, only dierent.

A. Friends and Allies (Mostly)

1) The Nineteenth Century

roughout the twentieth century, it became commonplace to refer

to the forty-ninth parallel — the boundary line between Canada

THE SAME, ONLY DIFFERENT

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and the United States — as the longest undefended border in the

world. is idea can be dated to the conclusion of the War of 

when Great Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of

Ghent in . Subsequently, they also signed the Rush-Bagot Treaty

in , which demilitarized the Great Lakes and prohibited both

countries from sailing warships there. Each country was allowed to

have one armed vessel with one cannon on Lake Ontario and each

country to have two armed vessels with one cannon each on the

other four Great Lakes. In , the United States Coast Guard

announced that it had armed eleven Coast Guard boats in Lakes

Erie and Huron with machine guns due to smuggling and fears of

terrorists, in apparent violation of the Treaty. Canada said it would

view the machine guns as a law enforcement tool, not for military

purposes, and so would not object.

e Treaty of Ghent laid the basis for a demilitarized boundary

between British North America and the United States, and marked

the end of direct violent conf‌lict between the governments of Can-

ada and the United States. It was followed by a long period of devel-

oping deep economic and cultural relations, as well as the gradual

integration of the military-industrial complex.

As we noted in Chapter , after the War of , Americans

turned to the policy of manifest destiny, which declared that it was

their fate and purpose to settle the West; as such, droves of settlers

moved there. is sometimes brought them into conf‌lict with both

Canada and Mexico and led to war with Mexico in the s and

a border dispute with Canada on the Pacif‌ic coast.

e gap between the political economies of Canada and the

United States was widened by the American Civil War from 

to , which cost some , American lives. e war helped

facilitate industrial development and the emergence of the steel

industry. In turn, this contributed to the building of transcontin-

ental railways that led to the further expansion of the republic west-

ward. e victory by the North over the South in the Civil War

marked the ascendance of an economy based on industrial capital-

ism in the northern states over the agricultural-plantation economy

Foreign Policy



of the south. America emerged as a p owerfully attractive destination

for growing numbers of immigrants. Many of them used Canada as

a stopping-o point on their way to the United States.

A variety of political, economic, and cultural interests existed

in British North America in the mid-nineteenth century. ey

jockeyed for position in response to the changing conditions,

including through the development of a political system of dual

elite accommodation in the institutions of the Province of Canada

where the interests of the two cultural communities in Canada East

and Canada West had to be bridged. Serious stresses and strains

stretched the system to its limits as diverging economic and cultural

dierences emerged.

One possibility was to join the United States. But this was a

minority view. After all, as noted in Chapter , Canadians could

have opted for American republicanism several times during the

American Revolution in , the War of , or the Rebellions

in Upper and Lower Canada in  and . But the powerful

inf‌luence of the United Empire Loyalists and the French, neither

of whom were predisposed to join the United States, foreclosed that

possibility. Indeed, as also noted in Chapter , British North Amer-

icans were motivated to unite partly because of their disdain for

the American model of democracy. us annexation to the United

States was not an attractive prospect for most. Indeed, by the s

the American experience of civil war provided the case for enhan-

cing the military security of British North America through the

union of the colonies. In short, “a sense of military insecurity and

consequent need for common defence” was a contributing factor in

the creation of a federal system in Canada. After all, there was a very

large well-trained demobilized army in the wake of the Civil War

looking for something to do. e Canadian colonies felt potential

American military action was always possible.

Moreover, since slavery had been abolished in the United States

as a result of the Civil War, northern expansion was a real possi-

bility. Prior to the war, the admission of any new slave state had

to be matched with the addition of a free state. is debilitated