Documents on Canadian External Relations / Documents relatifs aux relations exterieures du Canada, vol. 24: 1957-1958, Part I (review)

Following the general election in June 1957, the Progressive Conservative Party under new Prime Minister John Diefenbaker assumed responsibility for the direction of Canada's foreign policy and international relations in an increasingly challenging international environment. The recovery of Western European countries and Japan from the devastation of the Second World War, the slight relaxation of Cold War tensions after 1953, and the emergence of the Third World as a force in international affairs, among other factors, continued to erode the relative influence that Canada had enjoyed during its diplomatic 'golden age' in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

This latest volume of the Documents on Canadian External Relations is the first of two for the period from mid-1957 to the end of 1958. It contains chapters on Canadian foreign policy towards the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Commonwealth, Western Europe, and Atomic Energy. Other topics, including most notably Canada's relations with the United States, will be addressed in DCER volume 25. Like the editors of the previous volumes in this series, Michael Stevenson has compiled an excellent array of memos, notes, correspondence, and other documents that outline the nature of Canadian foreign policy and of the environment in which it operated during the first year and a half of the Diefenbaker government.

In chapter 3, for example, we learn of Diefenbaker's desire to halt Canada's drift into the American orbit by reasserting its ties to Britain and the Commonwealth, leading to his surprise announcement in July 1957 that Canada would divert 15 per cent of its imports from the United States to Britain. The difficulties inherent in this unrealistic proposal and in negotiating a mutually beneficial Anglo-Canadian free trade agreement in the fall of 1957, however, demonstrated that Canadian and British economic interests were diverging, with Canada becoming ever more enmeshed in the North American market while Britain's economic future was increasingly tied to the emerging European common market. The Canadian government did significantly augment its aid for Commonwealth countries through the Colombo Plan and helped create the Commonwealth scholarship program, yet neither Diefenbaker's wishes nor Canadians' sentimental attachments could contain the erosion of the Commonwealth's importance to Canada.

At the United Nations, assertive Third World countries ensured that thorny subjects like the disparity between developed and developing countries and decolonization figured prominently on the organization's agenda, to the discomfort of many Western countries including Canada. On several issues, Canada even found itself at odds with its American and British allies, over how far to extend claims of national jurisdiction over the world's oceans and seas, for example, and with France over its war in Algeria. Within NATO, the bastion of Western collective security, differences of opinion over nuclear strategy and over Charles de Gaulle's proposed leadership triumvirate strained the alliance's unity and cohesion. Everywhere, it seemed, the traditional pillars of Canada's post-war foreign policy were being severely challenged in the late 1950s.

The Diefenbaker government does not enjoy a stellar reputation with historians for its management of Canada's foreign relations, and the documents contained in this volume help reveal why. With little international experience when they took office in June 1957 - a problem that Diefenbaker's distrust of the senior officials of the Department of External Affairs only exacerbated - John Diefenbaker and his cabinet colleagues faced a daunting task in the opening years of what was ultimately a difficult period for Canada internationally. By providing ready access to some of the key documents pertaining to Canada's foreign policy during the first years of the Diefenbaker government, Michael Stevenson and the Historical Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs have facilitated...