Canada, NATO, and the Berlin Crisis, 1961–1962: “Slow-boil” or “pressure cooker?”

The short presidency of John F. Kennedy was the period in the Cold War era that came closest to getting hot: crises in Cuba, Berlin, and Southeast Asia each put the world on the brink of direct military engagement. While the Cuban Missile Crisis garners the lion's share of attention, and Kennedy's thinking on Vietnam remains a perennial guessing-game for scholars, historians are increasingly pointing to that other heightened moment in Cold War tensions, the Berlin Crisis, as one of the most dangerous and significant moments in east west conflict.1 Historians of Canada's foreign affairs, however, have given relatively little attention to Canada's role in the 1961 1962 showdown. What has been written about the crisis has been based on limited access to restricted primary sources. This essay, based on newly declassified material, offers a major corrective to the story of Canada's influence in allied deliberations over Berlin.Canada's response to the Berlin Crisis holds a curious place in the historiography of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's external affairs policy. It has been held up as a success story while, traditionally, Diefenbaker's foreign policy has been regarded with scorn and derision. Diefenbaker hardly covered himself with glory during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and neither his handling of the nuclear weapons file, nor Canada's entry into the North American Air Defence Command could be described as smooth. The prime minister's outrageous behaviour after a visit by Kennedy, during which the American visitors left a scrap of paper under a chesterfield, serves as a punch line for lecturers on Canada's foreign policy. The political scientist, Peyton Lyon, summing up Canadian diplomacy in the Kennedy years, claimed that even "a government of average coherence and competence could have managed Canada's external relations with greater success in the years 1961 1963."2 Nonetheless, in his book Canada in World Affairs, Lyon sneaks in a modicum of praise for the government. While it was unrealistic for Canada to "aspire to decisive influence" during a crisis, Lyon suggests that it was realistic "to seek an active role in the contingency planning which, in many instances, predetermines the critical decision."3 Lyon's nod to "contingency planning" is an acknowledgement of the process North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies undertook in the Kennedy years to prepare for a possible military confrontation over Berlin.The journalist, Robert Reford, further developed Lyon's argument in his book Canada and Three Crises, in which he argued that Canada was able to have some influence in the development of the allied contingency planning for Berlin. Berlin, of course, had been a focal point of the Cold War in Europe since the closing days of the Second World War. Because of the way tension built in Berlin during Dwight Eisenhower's second term and again during Kennedy's presidency, Reford termed the Berlin Crisis a "confrontation by slow boil." A "slow-boil crisis," he argued, "offers the best opportunity for advice and influence." Because the crisis developed slowly, and since NATO was "intimately concerned" with the contingency planning process, "it was possible for all the allies to be consulted." Canada therefore had influence, while "pure unilateral action" by the United States was rendered "impossible." Reford takes this evidence to form "a general rule" that "it is possible to be most influential while policy is being formulated."4Reford's argument that Canada could and did exert influence over allied contingency planning seems logical. Surely it makes sense that it was easier for Canada to influence its ally, or allies, as policy was developed. Yet this argument is rather vague. How did Canada influence its allies? Reford, writing in the 1960s, could not rely on archival records. Since then his argument has been fleshed out by scholars writing with some access to official documents. The scholars' sources, however, have been limited enough to be misleading. …