Lessons of restraint: How Canada helps explain and strengthen the nonproliferation norm

Abstract

The world takes Canada’s non-acquisition of nuclear weapons for granted. Though Canada does not pose a breakout threat from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the course of its nuclear weapons policy is far from simple, including at least two reversals and the electoral defeat of a sitting government. A careful observation of the history of Canada’s nuclear weapons policy illuminates a better understanding of the nonproliferation norm. This author looks at Canada’s restraint from acquisition of an independent nuclear weapons capability, which is often viewed as unremarkable. But the historical record is dense and interesting, shedding light on three important questions. First, why do states seek or reject nuclear weapons? Understanding the Canadian experience may help to explain other states’ nuclear weapons acquisition behavior and support the development of more nuanced policy and international legal instruments for nonproliferation. Second, what specific behaviors constitute compliance with the nonproliferation norm, and can we shape them to promote international peace and security? The Canadian experience suggests that our understanding of nuclear weapons did not spring into existence fully formed. Third, what should NATO’s role be with regard to preventing nuclear proliferation? As security threats evolve and nuclear proliferation increases in salience among threats to NATO members, response to this threat—whether it comes from one rogue state or the instability of the NPT regime—may move higher among alliance policy priorities. The author uses Canada as an example to improve our understanding of when the nonproliferation norm matters—and how competing priorities can be integrated with nonproliferation concerns within NATO.

Canada played an important role in the history of nuclear weapons. It was a member of the first “nuclear club,” the Manhattan Project; the site of the first nuclear reactor to go critical outside the United States; and the first country to apply International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards over a transfer of nuclear material. Canada developed its own technology for nuclear power generation, the Canadian-Deuterium (CANDU) reactor—with particular proliferation sensitivities, including natural uranium fuel and online fuel loading—and exported this technology around the world. Canada assertively participated in planning for nuclear war and was the first NATO ally to return U.S. nuclear weapons, after having integrated these weapons into its military from 1963 to 1984. Canada was the first state that could independently develop nuclear weapons but chose restraint. In doing so, it helped to draw the line between the nuclear weapon “haves” and “have nots,” building some proliferation-sensitive behaviors into today’s global nonproliferation norm while excluding others.

The world takes Canada’s non-acquisition of nuclear weapons for granted. No one worries about a Canadian breakout from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) the way some do about Japanese or German proliferation. Historian Andrew Richter observes that “no formal decision was ever made” by the Canadian government to forego an independent nuclear weapons capability (Richter, 2002: 20). Yet the course of Canada’s nuclear weapons policy is far from simple, including at least two reversals and the electoral defeat of a sitting government. A careful observation of the history of Canada’s nuclear weapons policy illuminates a better understanding of the nonproliferation norm.

First, Canada’s nuclear behavior may help explain when and under what conditions international factors influence domestic political debates over the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Second, as a pioneer of policies that are integrated into today’s nuclear nonproliferation norm, Canadian nuclear behavior sheds light on the complex and changing nature of this norm and the feasibility of efforts to shape it. Finally, as the first NATO ally to end joint control arrangements of U.S. nuclear weapons, Canadian nuclear behavior may help us understand the shifting balance between political cohesion, deterrent stability, and nonproliferation relevant to NATO strategic policy today.

Puzzling restraint: Windows of opportunity into domestic politics ¹

States choose to acquire or not acquire nuclear weapons consistent with their interests. These interests are arbitrated and expressed through domestic politics, perhaps helping to explain why so few states have acquired nuclear weapons despite strong security motivations to do so. Because domestic politics vary widely between states and within states over time, this widespread nuclear restraint remains difficult to explain, much less predict. Exploring why states that could build nuclear weapons did not do so may help provide insight into how and under what conditions international factors such as security, alliance politics, or a global nonproliferation norm influence state behavior.

Though pressure from the United States began years earlier, Canada decided to accept U.S. nuclear weapons in 1963, including nuclear warheads for Bomarc surface-to-air missiles and Genie air-to-air missiles to defend North America against bomber attack as well as nuclear weapons for Canadian ground forces and aircraft deployed in Europe (Clearwater, 1998). This decision aligns strongly with realist expectations regarding Canadian security concerns and alliance politics. But the substantial delay in Canada’s decision and its ultimate reversal reflects a complicated historical record. Domestic politics played a dominant role in this history. However, international factors occasionally influenced Canadian domestic politics related to nuclear weapons in important ways.

The security pressure to acquire nuclear weapons is attenuated for Canada by its proximity to and unique relationship with the United States. While threatened by the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, Canada benefits from perhaps the most credible and comprehensive U.S. security guarantee. The imperatives of prestige are muted in Canada by its late emergence from colonial status and apparent satisfaction with “middle power” status. Canada is a peace-loving nation, suggesting an absence of domestic interest in nuclear weapons acquisition. Canada’s abstention from nuclear weapons acquisition was not a consequence of alliance pressure; on the contrary, requirements of integrated North American air defense and alliance burden-sharing to maintain a forward deterrent force in Europe encouraged Canada’s acceptance of U.S. nuclear weapons into its armed forces. ²

While espionage concerns prompted U.S. restraints on the transfer of information on nuclear weapons design following World War II, neither the United States nor other NATO allies discouraged Canada from acquiring nuclear weapons. NATO encouraged Canadian participation in preparations for nuclear war. A year after the 1945 Trinity atomic test blast in New Mexico inaugurated the age of nuclear weapons, U.S. requests to store nuclear weapons and related assets at Canadian bases “were arriving thick and fast” (Eayrs, 1972: 352). The Eisenhower administration considered outright transfer of nuclear weapons to Canada (Maloney, 2007). In 1951 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission contracted to purchase as much uranium as Canada could supply, making it Canada’s leading mineral export by the end of the decade (Buckley, 2000). President John F. Kennedy repeatedly pressed Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker to accept U.S. tactical nuclear weapons for Canadian forces, only to be rebuffed each time. Kennedy, clearly frustrated, refused to have any further direct communications with Diefenbaker (Maloney, 2007). When Diefenbaker’s successor, Nobel Peace laureate Lester Pearson, accepted U.S. nuclear weapons in 1963, he did so for the specific purpose of fulfilling Canada’s responsibilities to NATO.

The conservative Diefenbaker had deflected acquisition of U.S. nuclear weapons for years, until it ultimately cost him an election in 1963. Uncomfortable with forced reliance on the United States for defense, Diefenbaker carefully cultivated a labyrinthine ambiguity with regard to nuclear weapons. In 1958, he endorsed acquisition of Bomarc anti-aircraft missiles but resisted acquisition of the nuclear warheads these missiles required to be effective. In October 1959, he unexpectedly canceled a massive joint air defense exercise in which U.S. bombers were to simulate a Soviet attack through Canada after months of planning, because his new secretary of state for external affairs, Howard Green, argued that it would provoke the Soviets (Jockel, 2007). In 1961 he plainly asserted that he would “not decide at the present time whether or not Canadian forces should be equipped with nuclear weapons” (Maloney, 2007: 234). His government imagined a “missing part” scheme for U.S. nuclear weapons designated for use by Canadian forces, whereby a cable or a plug would be delivered from the United States during an emergency to make these weapons operational. He dropped the idea when the United States found that such a system would be too slow and dangerous (Jockel, 2007; Maloney, 2007). The Canadian military openly advocated acquisition of U.S. nuclear weapons, and two defense ministers, George Pearkes and Douglas Harkness, resigned over Diefenbaker’s unwillingness to agree to nuclear weapons–sharing arrangements with the United States (Maloney, 2007).

The Liberal Party opposition, led by Pearson, initially seemed at least as reluctant to accept U.S. nuclear weapons, until a new argument triggered a prompt reversal. In January 1963, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Lauris Norstad asserted during an Ottawa visit that Canada had made a commitment to NATO to accept U.S. nuclear weapons. Nine days later, Pearson argued for acquisition of nuclear weapons in order to keep faith with Canada’s commitments to NATO (Maloney, 2007). A confused parliamentary debate ensued, prompting an official U.S. point-by-point refutation of the Canadian characterization of several nuclear weapons issues. In response, Prime Minister Diefenbaker exclaimed, “Now we have an election issue!” and recalled his Washington ambassador (Maloney, 2007: 301). His government lost a vote of no confidence in early February and was defeated by the Liberal Party in a national election two months later; Pearson accepted U.S. nuclear weapons later that year (Clearwater, 1998; Maloney, 2007).

The Canadian experience suggests that rather than exercising constant influence, international factors may affect the nuclear behavior of states when doors open in domestic politics. The requirement of nuclear weapons for NATO’s security did not originate or change in 1963, but its salience in Canadian politics changed dramatically as it was discovered by Canada’s Liberal Party opposition.

Norm entrepreneur: Shaping nonproliferation

Canadian nuclear policy complicates our understanding of the nuclear nonproliferation norm. Rather than many interacting partial causes leading to either nuclear proliferation or nonproliferation, careful observation of Canada’s nuclear weapons behavior reveals that relatively continuous political considerations generate an increasingly complex and evolving set of state behaviors. Observing early Canadian ideas and practices related to nuclear weapons helps illuminate the evolution of the global understanding of the nature and role of nuclear weapons. While nuclear proliferation may be a binary question of acquiring or not acquiring nuclear weapons, nonproliferation norm compliance is comprised of diverse—and sometimes contradictory—state behaviors. Canada’s proliferation “hedge” (its residual technical capability related to acquiring nuclear weapons) is significant and encompasses technologies, materials, and even operational experience.

Canada’s nuclear weapons policy was born multilateral in 1943 at the Quebec Conference, where the United States, Britain, and Canada established the ground rules for Manhattan Project cooperation. ³ The conference produced the Quebec Agreement, which pledged the signatories never to use the bomb against each other, never to use it against third parties without each other’s consent, and never to communicate about it to third parties without each other’s consent, and established a Combined Policy Committee on which Canada would have one of six seats. ⁴ The end of the war found Canada at the leading edge of the development of nuclear technology, with a substantial share of the world’s developed uranium reserves and refining capacity at the Eldorado mine and the heavy water–moderated Zero Energy Experimental Pile reactor about to go critical at Chalk River, Ontario (Bratt, 2006: 14–15).

Canada used its newfound relevance to nuclear affairs to assertively pursue international control of nuclear weapons through the United Nations. Canada co-sponsored U.N. General Assembly Resolution 1 on the “Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy.” This commission was comprised of representatives from all serving members of the Security Council as well as Canada. Participation in the Manhattan Project had secured Canada a permanent seat at the table in the first U.N. body not specified in the Charter. Although the commission was unsuccessful, Canada remained an active participant in negotiations over the control of nuclear weapons at the United Nations and the evolving Conference on Disarmament. In 1978, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau proposed a “strategy of suffocation” to end the nuclear arms race at the United Nations, arguing that Canada was “not only the first country in the world with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons that chose not to do so; we are also the first nuclear-armed country to have chosen to divest itself of nuclear weapons” (Trudeau, 1978).

In addition to disarmament diplomacy, Canada used exports of peaceful nuclear technology to support construction of the nonproliferation norm. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Canada undertook nuclear reactor exports for a variety of purposes, including supporting economic progress in the developing world, establishing markets for Canadian products and services, symbolizing Canada’s technological prowess, and contesting communist influence internationally. In 1956 Canada agreed to its first nuclear reactor export; the Canada-India-United States (CIRUS) research reactor went online in India in 1960. As no system of international safeguards existed at that time, no inspection provisions were included in the transfer agreement to verify India’s commitment to the peaceful use of the CIRUS reactor (Bratt, 2006). CIRUS would later be credited as the source of the plutonium that India used for its 1974 “peaceful nuclear explosion,” prompting an outbreak of supplier’s remorse in Canada (Albright, 1998). Canada suspended all nuclear cooperation and all non-food aid to India, ended its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, restricted its future nuclear assistance to NPT state parties, and added restrictions on nuclear trade with all states (Bratt, 2006; Legault and Fortmann, 1992). ⁵ Canada also refused to sell South Korea a CIRUS clone and, along with the United States, successfully obstructed the sale of a French reprocessing facility to South Korea and pressed South Korea to ratify the NPT (Bratt, 2006). Canada became the first state to agree to place all its international transfers of nuclear material under IAEA safeguards (Legault and Fortmann, 1992). ⁶ Canada engaged actively in nuclear war planning with its allies for the explicit purpose of discouraging the use of nuclear weapons. ⁷

The nuclear age challenged Canada’s fundamental sovereign ability to choose between peace and war. Sandwiched between the Cold War superpowers, all-out war in the 1950s would have made Canadian airspace the inevitable site of massive U.S. efforts to stop Soviet bombers. Canada’s first chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Foulkes, observed that “international boundaries cannot be respected when fighting an air battle” (Richter, 2002: 43). An attacking Soviet bomber force that is sufficient enough to threaten military bases inside the United States might, even in the event it was thoroughly repulsed and scattered before reaching its primary targets, pose an existential threat to Canadian cities. A Canadian Army study found in 1958 that continental air defense hinged on “using Canada as the killing area.” Canada was left to choose between planning to be an unwitting host of Armageddon or actively participating in continental air defense. Sovereignty argued strongly for the latter. ⁸ While the nuclear sword would remain dominantly American, practical considerations drove the Canadian military to share the burden of the nuclear shield through the establishment of an integrated North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD “stood up” as a military command in September 1957 but would experience what historian Joseph Jockel called a “rebirth in diplomatic and Canadian constitutional wedlock six months later” as the Canadian government sought to mitigate the erosion of Canadian sovereignty implied by the command (Jockel, 2007: 3). Diplomacy notwithstanding, NORAD’s Canadian deputy commander received pre-delegated authority to use nuclear weapons for air defense (the Genie and Bomarc missiles) almost immediately after his arrival (Jockel, 2007). ⁹

The advent of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) underlined the challenge of defending Canadian cities, but paradoxically opened up new options for Canadian defense policy. Unlike the bomber threat, ICBMs would cover the distance from their Soviet launch sites to their targets in minutes rather than hours; as Jockel notes, “Canadian territory was all but irrelevant for warning of missile attack” (Jockel, 2007: 189). Consequently, Canada gradually relaxed its participation in air defense and rejected missile defense altogether without unacceptable political consequences from its allies. During the 1968 renewal of the NORAD agreement, Canada specifically rejected the possibility of participating in ballistic missile defense (Jockel, 2007).

Balancing responsibilities: Canadian integration of alliance objectives

Canada’s historical experience offers insight into how NATO might integrate its pursuit of seemingly divergent policy objectives today, including deterrence stability, political cohesion, and nonproliferation. This experience may be relevant to NATO’s new Strategic Concept, which is due to be adopted at the Lisbon Conference in November and in which the future of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed with NATO allies in Europe may be considered.

Deterrence stability remains crucial to NATO security as long as Russia retains sufficient armaments to threaten Europe. Decreased investments in conventional forces may even present new challenges to stability as Russian doctrine increasingly relies on nuclear weapons to balance a perceived gap with NATO. In this context, European security may indefinitely depend on the U.S. nuclear deterrent, but does the presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe increase stability?

Deterrent stability was Canada’s primary concern in NATO’s nuclear planning (Department of National Defence Paper for Special Task Force Europe, 1968). To this end, Prime Minister Trudeau ended Canada’s nuclear strike role in Europe—the deployment of F-104 Starfighters prepared to use U.S. nuclear weapons against ground targets in the event of war. He even argued that Canada should unilaterally make clear that “our military arrangements were purely defensive in character” (Simpson, 2001: 88; Jockel, 2007: 84). From this perspective, delicate calculations of the balance of forces may be subordinated to broad efforts at confidence-building in pursuit of deterrent stability. It may be argued that Canada explored this option at a time when the United States could not, but conditions have changed since then.

Russia’s suspension of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty underlines the importance of a new architecture of confidence-building measures and arms control in Europe. In the absence of strong political motivations for conflict, stability can be the exclusive purpose of such a negotiated architecture, and new options may emerge for limiting nonstrategic nuclear weapons deployments. As Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, observes, NATO’s concerns about Russia today are “actually not about nuclear weapons per se, it’s more about the broader question of the lack of credibility that some allies feel about Article V”—the crucial stipulation that an armed attack against any NATO country in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all (Brookings Institution, 2010: 35).

The political cohesion within NATO underlying the credibility of Article V has always been important to Canada. During the Cold War, Canada pursued a strategy of “saliency” within NATO to field forces that would matter to the other allies and secure the state a seat at the table. For two decades, this included acceptance of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons.

The lukewarm acceptance and gradual termination of Canada’s nuclear weapons-sharing arrangements with the United States did not undermine NATO’s political cohesion. When Prime Minister Pearson announced Canada’s acceptance of U.S. nuclear weapons on January 5, 1964, he argued that Canada had no intention of becoming a “nuclear power” (Legault and Fortmann, 1992: 252). By the mid-1960s, nuclear weapons deployed with Canada’s ground forces in Europe had “rusted out” (that is, they were not replaced—as they were by other allies—at the end of their service life) (Maloney, 2007: 357). Pearson’s successor, Trudeau, announced the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Canada’s strike aircraft in Europe in April 1969 (Legault and Fortmann, 1992). By 1972 the Bomarc surface-to-air missile warheads in Canada were withdrawn, leaving Genie air-to-air missiles on F-101 Voodoo interceptors as the only nuclear weapons deployed with Canadian forces (Maloney, 2007). Despite emotional reactions from some European allies, Canada remained an active member of NATO—as Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet minister head observed, “one of three with armed forces permanently garrisoned out of country”—and assumed the presidency of the North Atlantic Council on schedule in 1981 (Head and Trudeau, 1995: 75; Lackenbauer, 2002: 52). Trudeau’s commitment to divest Canada of its nuclear forces was unceremoniously fulfilled in 1984 as Canada’s nuclear-armed F-101 Voodoo interceptors were replaced with conventionally armed CF-18 Hornets (Head and Trudeau, 1995). Canada fulfilled its commitments to its allies but avoided new commitments involving nuclear weapons. Each element of operational nuclear weapons responsibility undertaken in response to these commitments ended as soon as it outlived its usefulness, and Canada’s role in the alliance, much less NATO’s overall political cohesion, seems no worse for the wear.

NATO’s fundamental purpose—which its political cohesion exists to serve—is to ensure the security of its members. Today’s threats to the security of NATO members are different than those the alliance faced at its founding in 1949. Nuclear proliferation is high on the list of these threats.

Nonproliferation has long been an important function of NATO and the U.S. “nuclear umbrella.” The NATO Treaty’s Article V obligation, European deployments of U.S. nuclear weapons, and planning for shared control of nuclear weapons in the event of war all serve to mitigate security pressures encouraging nuclear weapons acquisition among NATO’s non-nuclear weapon state members. These strong indications of the credibility of U.S. security assurances to the allies were explicitly accommodated in the NPT, prompting Prime Minister Trudeau to remark upon considering the NPT that “non-proliferation is really not an obstacle to some proliferation” (Legault and Fortmann, 1992: 258).

Trudeau’s observation suggested another way in which NATO contributes to nonproliferation—by fostering cooperation and setting a positive example. In the foreseeable future, the nonproliferation norm may include the absence of storage of foreign nuclear weapons within the national territory of non-nuclear weapon states and even the prospect of negotiations toward a nuclear-weapon-free zone agreement for Europe. These would be positive developments for the NPT regime, and all NATO members acknowledge the importance of the NPT regime to their security.

Conclusion

Canada’s restraint from acquisition of an independent nuclear weapons capability is often viewed as unremarkable; historian Brian Buckley likened it to “a Canadian variant perhaps of the theme ‘No sex please, we’re British’” (Buckley, 2000: 10). The historical record, however, is dense and interesting, shedding light on three important questions.

First, why do states seek or reject nuclear weapons? The Canadian experience suggests that even strong pressures of security and alliance politics may be resisted until domestic political opportunities appear. Understanding this may help to explain the nuclear weapons acquisition behavior of other states and support the development of more nuanced policy and international legal instruments for nonproliferation.

Second, what specific behaviors constitute compliance with the nonproliferation norm, and can we shape them to promote international peace and security? The Canadian experience suggests that our understanding of nuclear weapons did not spring into existence fully formed; the bomb did not come wrapped up in instructions. State practice evolved into a nonproliferation norm, then crystallized into the NPT—and even then the evolution did not stop, as, for example, peaceful nuclear explosions allowed in the NPT fell out of vogue. Greater understanding of the choices that contributed to the formation of the nonproliferation norm may improve our understanding of the breadth of policy options available to us today.

Third, what should NATO’s role be with regard to preventing nuclear proliferation? NATO is a tremendously powerful instrument for promoting the security of its members. Nonproliferation has long been an important aspect of NATO’s performance. As security threats evolve and nuclear proliferation increases in salience among threats to NATO members, response to this threat, whether it comes from a rogue state or the instability of the NPT regime, may move higher among alliance policy priorities. Canada is an example that may improve our understanding of when the nonproliferation norm matters—and how competing priorities can be integrated with nonproliferation concerns within NATO.