Canada and The Vietnam War - Beginnings

Beginnings

Further information: Canada in the Cold War

During the Cold War, Canada was firmly allied with the mainstream Western powers. For instance, Canada was a founding member of NATO, and was instrumental in the forming of that military alliance against the Soviet Union and its satellites. Canada's foreign policy was also committed to multilateralism and the United Nations, perhaps most noticeably under Lester B. Pearson from 1963 to 1968. Canada thus found itself in a difficult position, caught between these two foreign policy objectives. Canadians were hesitant to adopt the Truman or Eisenhower Doctrines, which held that communism itself must be actively opposed through foreign intervention. Instead, Canada's policy was that illegal acts of international aggression must be opposed, as in the Korean War, during which Canada was among the many countries that sent troops to fight in support of South Korea, under a United Nations resolution.

During the First Indochina War between France and the Indo-Chinese nationalist and communist parties, Canada remained militarily uninvolved but provided modest diplomatic and economic support to the French. Canada was, however, part of the International Control Commission (along with Poland and India) that oversaw the 1954 Geneva Agreements that divided Vietnam, provided for French withdrawal and would have instituted elections for reunification by 1956. Behind the scenes, Canadian diplomats tried to discourage both France and the United States from escalating the conflict in a part of the world Canadians had decided was not strategically vital.

Canada laid out six prerequisites to joining a war effort or Asian alliance like SEATO:

  1. It had to involve cultural and trade ties in addition to a military alliance.
  2. It had to demonstrably meet the will of the people in the countries involved.
  3. Other free Asian states had to support it directly or in principle.
  4. France had to refer the conflict to United Nations.
  5. Any multilateral action must conform to the UN charter.
  6. Any action had to be divorced from all elements of colonialism.

These criteria effectively guaranteed Canada would not participate in the Vietnam War.

Read more about this topic:  Canada And The Vietnam War

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