Avoiding Armageddon: Canadian Military Strategy and Nuclear Weapons, 1950-63

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and coauthor
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influ

One of the truisms about Canadian military policy is that strategy is
something Canada left to its betters. The British or the Americans (or
both together) laid down the direction and Canada, a good soldier, did
what it was told and provided men and money for the cause. Certainly
this was true in the Great War and in World War II, but Andrew Richter
convincingly argues that in the St. Laurent and Diefenbaker governments
there was strategic thinking underway in some of the darker recesses of
the Department of National Defence. Officials like R.J. Sutherland
played an important role in defining the Canadian policy on nuclear
weapons, for example, and on deterrence and arms control. The Canadian
experts held their own with the Americans and British and offered
thoughtful, nuanced advice to the cabinet. Whether this made much
difference is less clear, but Richter establishes beyond doubt that
high-quality strategic thinking went on in Ottawa. That, in and of
itself, changes the way historians will approach this period.