Canada and NATO: Uneasy Past, Uncertain Future

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of History at York University and author
of Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy.

Suddenly, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded in 1949, looks
irrelevant, and we can be certain of a major debate on nato’s future
in the 1990s. This volume, with academic papers by historians, political
scientists, and former diplomats, was presented at a conference in
Toronto to mark nato’s 40th anniversary. The more presentient essays
suffer somewhat from the events of the past two years, but there is some
prescience—for example, in former Ambassador to Germany John
Halstead’s able piece on Canada and nato in the 1990s. All the papers
concern Canada’s role in the alliance. The best are by John English
and David Bercuson, two leading historians of Canadian foreign policy.
This is a very good book, one that deserves a wider readership than the
University of Waterloo Press may be able to get for it.