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Essay On Canada After The Cuban Missile Crisis

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Canada in the Cuban Missile Crisis
Canada maintained both diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba following the Cuban Revolution before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The insistence on a much more placated policy towards the Cuban government became a source of contention between the United States and Canada. Therefore, after the Cuban Missile Crisis began, which was when an American U2 spy plane flying over Cuba and photographed the construction of several missile deployment sites on October 14, 1962, Canada’s military force were expected to go immediate war alert status. However, Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker refused to the need of United Nations intervention. After a tense phone call between President John F. Kennedy and Diefenbaker, Canada’ …show more content…

shores, the United States felt the threat from Soviet and then enacted a naval blockade around Cuba. According to the researches, there were two reasons for the US to take this action. One is because of national security. As the nuclear threat was so near, it presented a sense of insecurity to American people, which was not tolerated by them. Secondly, President Kennedy would not allow his government sit there doing nothing in the face of Soviet aggression, which would damage his image and prestige in the country, and more importantly, would impair the position of US in the world. During this confrontation, Canada also played an important role. US depended on Canada who had defense cooperation with US. However, Canada became a trouble to the US, as Prime Minister Diefenbaker doubted the authenticity of the photos US provided to him about Soviet missiles on Cuba and feared that it would cause nuclear war and huge destruction. But later, Diefenbaker began to agree with Kennedy in that the deployment of missiles on Cuba by Soviet was offensive and should be removed. The "slow" response of Diefenbaker administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis helped, to some extent, to ease the tension between two countries, and also showed that Canada wanted to solve the crisis in a peaceful way. Canada’s peace strategy was also reflected by its defense policy that they did not develop or utilize nuclear weapons to defend its nation. So when US asked Canada to add nuclear warhead to its OMARC-B type missile, Canada was put into a

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