A Two-Edged Sword

The following is excerpted from A Two-Edged Sword: The Navy as an Instrument of Canadian Foreign Policy by Nicholas Tracy.

 

The Monroe Doctrine and the American fleet contributed to Canada’s immunity to the threat of direct German power projection, or that by any other naval power, but Canadians did not consider dependence on the United States for their defence a comfortable option. The 1895 Venezuela boundary dispute, in which British interests had been opposed by the United States, had raised the spectre in Ontario of the United States invading Canada to punish Britain, and had forced Laurier to consider the need for local naval defence on the lakes. At the 1897 Colonial Conference Laurier, echoing Macdonald, asserted that any differences with the United States were “family troubles which mean nothing very serious,” and he reportedly told General Douglas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, arriving in Canada in 1902 to take charge of the militia, that Canada was quite comfortable relying upon the Monroe Doctrine for her defence. But the reality was somewhat different. The U.S. Navy demonstrated its new power in the Spanish-American war, at the battle of Santiago de Cuba on 3 July 1898, when the Spaniards lost 160 men killed and 1,800 captured, while the Americans lost only one man killed and another wounded. The spoils of war included the American acquisition of the Philippines and Guam, the establishment of naval bases on Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and at Subic Bay, in the Philippines, and the annexation of independent Hawaii. Vancouver wondered whether it might be the next to experience American naval power.

 

Meet the author 

Nov 29, 7:00 pm
A Two-Edged Sword Book Launch 
Beaverbrook Gallery, New Brunswick

 

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