Balancing War and Peace: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Vietnam War, 1961–1965

Extract

“A settlement is hard to envisage in the heat of battle,” Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson declared on 2 April 1965, “but it is now imperative to seek one.”1 With these words, the leader of America's closest ally publicly expressed growing frustration with, and opposition to, American military intervention in Vietnam. In a speech at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pearson called on the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson to halt unilaterally the bombing and seek a negotiated settlement with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The private, growing rift between Canadian and American foreign policy toward Vietnam was now very open and very wide. Incensed over the timing and location of the speech as much as its content, LBJ immediately summoned Pearson to Camp David; unsurprisingly, the Temple speech was the main issue that Johnson wanted to discuss. The resultant scene, during which LBJ berated Pearson for over an hour and eventually grabbed the prime minister by the lapels of his coat, is a familiar one.2 It is also instructive: regarding Southeast Asia, the differences between the American and Canadian perspectives had, by mid-1965, widened so much as to be irreconcilable. Canada and the United States disagreed fundamentally over the strategic importance of Vietnam, and over America's ability to achieve its goals in Southeast Asia.