Canada and NATO

In the book entitled Canada, NATO and The Bomb: The Western Alliance in Crisis by Tom Keating and Larry Pratt the main issue discussed was Canada’s position in Europe, North America and their view on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It went into specific issues dealing with political tension within Canada and tension outside Canada with other countries. It went through the years of different political parties and how they dealt with the matters of NATO.

It states Canada’s opinion dealing with matters such as the alliance, war, and decision making with other countries involved in NATO. The book came across Canada’s decision making as though Canada went along with the decisions made by other countries. Canada, NATO, and The Bomb is not a book to inform it is a history book. It addressed issues that had happened previously and stated the type of involvement Canada had in it. In most cases, a book dealing with these sensitive issues, which involved other countries, would provide the pros and cons but in this case only the cons of NATO and the alliance were provided.

This book showed NATO as being an organization that is very unorganized. It came across as though the countries involved did not respect each other’s thoughts and opinions. It dwells on the mistakes made by countries for example the United States, various other European countries. It made it seem as though NATO was in conflict within each other making the organization as a whole seem incapable of compromise and the defence of anything. At many points NATO wanted to vote the United States out of the organization but this obviously never happened. At one point it was a problem “about the possibility of being dominated and ultimately overwhelmed by too close an association with the United States” (pg.30) for Canada and their relationship.

The themes of the book were Canada and its position in NATO and NATO’s and its position in the world. The theme was not presented clearly. One of the points were Canada and the main focus was any and everything but Canada. It stated over and over again that Canada did not approve of very much but that was it. It came across as if Canada was only complaining and nothing was being done. NATO and its position are expressed as only conflicts within the congress. It was giving history presentation information dealing with NATO, its purpose and its views on important topics.