The Further Shore
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200105600106 |
| Author | Robert Bothwell |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ROBERT
BOTHWELL
The
further
shore
Canada
and
Vietnam
IN
CANADA
THE
VIETNAM
WAR
is
primarily
remembered
as
an
episode
in
domestic
politics
-
riots,
protests,
dissent
-
or
as
a
peculiarly
unfor-
tunate
period
in
Canadian-American
relations.
In
some
ways,
this
is
appropriate.
The
war
was,
above
all,
a
public
phenomenon,
in which
diplomacy
came
up
against
the
force
of
public
opinion
and
lost.
'Quiet
diplomacy,'
as
far
as
Canadian-American
relations
were
concerned,
was
a
lost
cause,
as
politicians desperately
tried
to
shore
up
their
stand-
ing
with
an
aroused
and
irritable
public
opinion.
There
was
no
policy
choice
except
expedience
and
no
alternative
but
surrender
to
the loud
demands
of
many
Canadians.
It
was,
in
some
respects,
the
well-inten-
tioned
diplomat's worst
nightmare.
That
story
is
true enough,
as
far
as
it
goes,
but
it
applies
mostly
to
the
second
half
of
Canada's
involvement
with Vietnam,
from
1965
until
the
fall
of
Saigon
to
the
communists
in
1975.
It
does
not
describe
the
first
half
of
the
Canadian
experience
in
Southeast
Asia,
from
1954
to
1965.
That
episode
was
just
as
interesting
because
it,
too,
brought
together
contradictory
elements
in
Canada's external
policy.
On
the
one
hand
was
Western solidarity,
surely
the
touchstone
of
Canadian
foreign
relations
from
the
1940s
through
the
1990s,
and
perhaps
still.
On
the
other
was
the
sense
of
a
world
beyond
the cold
war
-the
emerg-
ing nations
of
Asia
and
later
Africa
-
and
that
the
Western
position
in
the
cold
war
might
be
damaged
or
imperilled
unless
the
interests
of
the
poor
and
populous
countries
of
Asia
were
taken
into
account.
Professor
of
Histor
University
of
Toronto.
The
author
is
at
present working
on histories
of
Canadian
oreign
relations
and
of
the
impact
of
the Vietnam
experience on
Canada.
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL Winter
2000-2001
Robert
Bothwell
The
1950s
thus
witnessed the
first
serious
engagement
of
the
Canadian
government
in
Asia.
The
Liberal
government
of
Louis
St
Laurent and
his
foreign policy
advisers
was
not
indifferent
to the
logic
of
population
statistics.
China
and
India
and
the
countries
in
between
accounted
for
half of
humanity,
and
they
were
steadily
growing.
With
China
overcome
by
chaos
and
then communism,
it made
sense
to pay
attention
to
India.
Canada
was
linked to
India
through
the
shared
his-
tory
of
the
politics
and culture
of
the
British
Empire
and through
the
British
Commonwealth.
The
story
of
that
early
experience
is
depressing
as
well.
In
1954
Canada
undertook
to
help
clean
up
the
aftermath
of
a
colonial
war
that
seemed
to
pit
East against
West,
North
against
South, communism
against democracy,
and
the emergent nationalism
of
the
Third
World
against the colonial
hangovers
of
European
imperialism.
The
Canadian
government
of
the
day,
Liberal
in
politics
and
liberal
in
tem-
perament,
was
a
firm
member
of
the
Western
alliance.
Yet
it
also
defined
itself
as
untainted
by
European -
even
British
-
colonialism and
as
unmoved
by
the
sometimes
hysterical
and
always
strident
anti-com-
munism
that
in
the
1950s disfigured American
public
life.
At
the
time,
these
qualities
were
considered moral
assets,
and
they
were
deployed
in
1954
in
formerly French
Indochina.
But
vision
and
good
intentions
took
policy
only
so
far,
for
experience
in
Vietnam
showed
that
Canadian-Indian
differences were
far
greater
than
convergences.
ORIGINS
Canada's
involvement
in
Indochina
and
its
tangled diplomacy dated
back
to the
collapse
of
French
power in
World
War
Two.
Canadian
pol-
icy
during
that
war
and
after
was
to
sustain
French
resistance
and
then
restore France
as
a
major
component
in
the
international
system.
As
Canadian
diplomats
discovered,
that
meant
accepting
what
the
French
government
believed
to
be
necessary
for
the
restoration
of
French
power.
That
in
turn
meant
coming
to
terms
with
French
policy in
Indochina.'
i
See
William
I.
Hitchcock,
France
Restored: Cold
WarDiplomacy
and
the
Quest
for
Leadership
in
Europe (Chapel
Hill:
University
of
North Carolina
Press
1998),
73,
116-
7. Early
on
Indochina
became
a
point of
confrontation
between
right
and
left
in
France;
the
absorption
of
the
Indochinese
colonial
war
into
the
cold
war
put
to
rest,
temporarily,
American
misgivings about
the wisdom
of supporting
a
colonial
regime.
90
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL Winter2000-2001
To continue reading
Request your trial