Review: Canada: Avoiding Armageddon
| Author | Patricia McMahon |
| Published date | 01 March 2003 |
| Date | 01 March 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070200305800111 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
.VIEWS
CANADA
AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON
Canadian military
strategy
and
nuclear weapons,
1950-63.
Andrew
Richter
Vancouver:
UBC
Press,
2002,
x,
214
pp,
$85.00
cloth
(ISBN
0-7748-
0888-8),
$27.95
paper
(ISBN
0-7748-0889-6)
A
voiding
Armageddon
is
an
account
of
Canadian
military
strategy
J
Iand
nuclear
weapons
that
should
have
been
told
long
before
now.
The
traditional
view
is
that
Canadians
did
not
think
about
strategy
during
the
cold war.
With
no
tradition
of
strategic
thought,
Canadians
were
dependent
upon
foreign
military doctrines
and the
defence
poli-
cies
that
resulted
from
them.
Moreover,
Canadian
policy-makers
were
thought
to
be
wholly
dependent on
American
strategic
thinking.
The
dearth
of
Canadian
strategic studies
reflects
this
traditional
perspective
in
the
absence
of
documentation
to
illustrate
the
contrary;
it
does
not,
however,
accurately
reflect
the
level
of
interest
of
policy-makers.
Relying
on
original
documentation,
Richter
successfully
challenges
this
orthodox
approach.
An
examination
of
the
historical
evidence
of
strategic
thought
at
the
Department
of
National
Defence,
as
well
as
the
interplay
and
differ-
ences
between
that
department
and
the
Department
of
External
Affairs,
between
1950
and
1963,
leads
Richter
to
argue
that
Canadians
identified
strategic interests
that
were
separate
from those
of
the
Americans
and
other
allies.
Richter
demonstrates
the
existence
of
inde-
pendent
strategic
thought
in
two
ways.
He
compares
the
conceptual
thinking
of
Canadians
on
core
issues
(for example,
the
acquisition
of
nuclear
weapons)
with
those
of
key
foreign
strategists.
At
the
same
time,
he
examines
how
Canada's
national
interests
influenced
the
rec-
ommendations
of
government
officials
and
how
those
interests
were
tempered
by external
constraints.
To
this
end
he
relies
on
a
selected
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Winter
200
2-2
003
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