Invisible and Inaudible in Washington
American Policies towards Canada during the Cold War
La description
Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount examine details of White House policy
from 1945 to the 1980s to assess the extent to which the United States
could be said to have had a Canada policy. They challenge the popular
nationalist view that Canada has been treated as peripheral and
dependent, but also counter the opposing view that Washington has
respected Canadian advice and benefitted from it. Instead, they argue
that for the most part Canada has mattered little in Washington and
that America’s Canada policy is largely an ad hoc affair.
Reviews
... provides a very effective way to gauge policy . .. What impresses the reader is how effectively the authors have used their sources and the balanced, if unsurprising, conclusions they have drawn. .. readers who want the most up-to-date information on America’s relations with Canada are recommended to start with this text.
- Lawrence Aronsen
... a meticulously researched account of US policies towards Canada from 1945 to the 1990s . .. This conclusion [i. e. that Canada has simply been too insignificant for US policy-makers to have formed a 'Canadian policy'] will annoy popular nationalist writers in Canada. .. but the scholarship of Mahant and Mount is so painstaking that their viewpoint will have to be taken seriously. .. The book performs a valuable service in subverting some of the easy conventional thinking that often takes place in Canada on these matters.
- Gordon T. Stewart