To what extent was Canada a willing participant in the Cold War confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

Our work aims to research to what extent was Canada a willing participant in the Cold War confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union from the late 1940s to the early 1960s . At first we should make clear what the Cold War itself was . Then we are going to state that Canada helped the US in confrontation but never was the active player

But when we speak of the Cold War , what do we mean ? The state of undeclared hostility--the phrase Cold War is not accidental--between the two groupings has meant that

a perpetual state of military readiness has been maintained for more than 40 years . But viewed from the perspective of different countries , in different regions , the concrete reality of the Cold War takes on varied aspects . Each country brought to the Cold War its own history . Traditional foreign policy and defence problems did not evaporate in 1945 . Instead , they became the old wine that had to be poured into the new bottle called the Cold War . The Cold War is continued atmosphere of fear . Surprisingly , McNamara agreed , but apparently at that moment a report came in that the Soviets were attempting to fly a plane down from Canada to Cuba , possibly with nuclear weapons on board . 1

The Cold War between two political systems became the logical continuation of the World War II . To understand the role of Canada in post-war confrontation we should see what was before the Second World War . Generally Canada faced a major defence and foreign policy dilemma at the close of World War II . The Canadian Arctic was obviously to be a front line in any future war . Did Canada have the resources to guard that front line to the satisfaction of its superpower ally , the United States ? It was obvious , almost from the start that it did not . But could Canada allow the United States to mount that "long polar watch " alone from Canadian territory ? Would this not be an admission that whatever sovereignty Canada claimed in the polar regions was weak at best and xistent at worst ? Canada 's claims to sovereignty over the high Arctic , especially the archipelago , were not particularly strong in 1945 . They rested primarily on Britain 's transfer of this area to Canada in 1880 . British claims had not been based on occupation or use , but on the tenuous rights of discovery and the sector principle . Gordon Smith defines the sector principle this way "Each state with a continental Arctic coastline automatically falls heir to all the islands lying between this coastline and the North Pole , which are enclosed by longitudinal lines drawn from the eastern and western extremities of the same coastline to the Pole "2 Although Canada did begin to assert some degree of control over the region as early as the turn of the century its presence there was almost xistent up to the post-World War II era , and its claims to the region were based both on the transfer from Britain and...