Few defence relationships in the world have been as deeply embedded as that between Canada and the United States. Built over decades of shared threats and integrated institutions, it has long shaped Canada’s military planning and strategic outlook. As Washington grows less predictable and old assumptions fray, can Canada rethink its defence posture without undermining the cooperation on which North American security still depends?
It is safe to say the US and Canadian defence establishments are intertwined in ways that few others are. It is also increasingly possible that this will change.
Canada and the US have moved steadily closer to a de facto integrated defence of North America since the dark days of World War II. This began when President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King moved to shore up North America in case all of Europe fell to the Nazis, and it would become necessary for the “New World” to fight on alone. Cooperation intensified as the Cold War got underway and the USSR emerged as a common adversary.
An interlocking web of institutions and military arrangements gives this life. These include standing binational political consultative groups (such as the Permanent Joint Board on Defence founded in August 1940), industrial arrangements (such as the Hyde Park Declaration of 1941, the Defence Production Sharing Agreement of 1956 and various successors), and an outright binational military command (the North American Aerospace Defence Command, NORAD, founded in 1958 and the only major US combat command which is shared with another nation).