Sovereignty and Command in Canada-US Continental Air Defence, 1940–57 by Richard Goette
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019855950 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Stevenson credits Green with persistent efforts toward nuclear disarmament, which
finally led to a crucial (and still sustained) international ban on nuclear testing.
Both were positive and historic gains.
Assessing Canadian policy in a period of relative Western decline after the
decade of US postwar dominance, this collection suggests that Diefenbaker’s
response to the international challenges he faced ‘‘was more nuanced and successful
than his critics have acknowledged’’ (280). Confused, ill-organized, and dilatory as
his foreign policy may have been, the overall conclusion of the book is a fair one,
backed by extensive, fresh archival research (sometimes demonstrated in mind-
numbing footnoted documentation).
Richard Goette
Sovereignty and Command in Canada-US Continental Air Defence, 1940–57
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. 312 pp. $89.95 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-7748-3687-6
Reviewed by: Randall Wakelam (Randall.Wakelam@rmc.ca), Royal Military College of
Canada, Canada
The question of who commands Canadian service personnel is a longstanding,
delicate, and often vexatious one. Since the first deployment of Canadians overseas
in 1885, politicians and military leaders have been concerned about who gives
orders to Canada’s soldiers, sailors, and aviators. This book, by one of Canada’s
leading air power researchers, deals with the complex and not-infrequently confus-
ing matter of the integration of the efforts of fighting services of two or more
nations within an alliance or collation. The case study on which this investigation
is based is that of the harmonization of Canadian and US air forces for the defence
of North America.
The topic has been looked at in lesser detail in the past. W.A.B. Douglas’s
The Creation of a National Air Force (volume 2 of the RCAF Official History)
and James Eayrs’ Peacemaking and Deterrence introduced readers to questions of
who should control Canadian flying efforts. A much more focused study, Joseph
Jockel’s No Boundaries Upstairs, investigated differing national (Canadian and US)
interpretations of how the air defence collation that became the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was designed and adopted. Goette’s
study goes beyond these to examine the specifics, and looks at the gestation of
continental air defence from the first bilateral discussions and plans of 1940
through to the actual creation of NORAD.
Before looking at the events, Goette begins by positing that while Canadians
have allowed, and continue to allow, the US (specifically the US Air Force) to
control air defence functions and operations, Canada has not given up sovereignty
and command of its air force. He argues this point as a counter to defence
commentator Professor Michael Byers’ contention that the central characteristic
of a sovereign state is the ‘‘control’’ of its armed services. Goette says that this is
Book Reviews 337
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