George Grande

GEORGE GRANDE

* Interviewers: Hill, Pawelek

 

[HILL]* Good afternoon. Today we have with us Ambassador George Grande, formerly Canada’s representative to the MBFR negotiations in Vienna and former Ambassador to South Africa. After serving with the RCAF and RAF in war time. Ambassador Grande joined the Department of External Affairs in 1946, and subsequently served in the Canadian Mission to the United Nations in New York, in Athens, in Berlin, with the Defence Relations Division of the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa, on the Directing Staff of the National Defence College in Kingston, and in various senior posts overseas. These included the following: High Commissioner to Ceylon 1964-66, Ambassador to Norway and Iceland 1968-72, Ambassador to the Conference on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions in Vienna 1973-76, and Ambassador to South Africa and High Commissioner to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland 1976-79. Ambassador Grande retired from the Department of External Affairs in 1979, and is now a well known columnist and editorial writer with the Ottawa Citizen.

 

Ambassador Grande, as you know, what we are doing here now is part of an oral history of Canadian policy in NATO. We are trying to gather the views of Canadians who have been most active in NATO's policy-making and NATO-related affairs, so as to develop ideas on the importance of NATO to Canada. We want to know how well membership in NATO has served Canada over the years in the pursuit of its direct national interests and also those broader long term goals, so important to the future of this country, such as international peace and security. We are trying to look at the main policy developments and issues in our field over the past 40 years in a fairly systematic fashion, and to learn what happened, and how Canada and the Alliance were affected by various developments. So the focus of our discussions will be on those periods of your career when you were directly involved in NATO affairs or NATO-related issues, especially your period as Ambassador in Vienna. However, we would also like to get the flavour of your own personal views and reflections on Canada's MBFR foreign policy, and on the general evolving world scene. So we will also touch on some of the other periods in your very extensive and interesting career.

 

PART I - Early Years, to 1945

 

[HILL] Ambassador Grande, you were born in Montreal, I believe, and grew up there?

 

[GRANDE] That's right.

 

[HILL] You graduated from McGill University in 1940 in English and Economics, and then briefly attended Osgoode Hall Law School, in Toronto.

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

[HILL] In 1941, you joined the RCAF and a year later were commissioned as a pilot officer. Afterwards you saw service with the RAF in the UK, India and Ceylon, and were in the armed forces until 1945 when you were demobbed as a Flight Lieutenant. Could you tell us a little bit about this period and what kind of tasks you were involved in at that time, and how it came that you went to India and so on.

 

[GRANDE] Yes. I first, while still attending law school in Osgoode Hall in Toronto, tried to enter the armed forces because at that time the war hotted up, as you may recall, in '41 in particular, and I tried to enter as a recruit. My poor eyesight disqualified me for that rather quickly. I then tried for the Navy but was rejected on an interview and finally landed up with the Air Force who were at that time pushing what they called RDF (Radio Direction Finding), and the Americans called it radar and wanted people with fair educations to learn what it was all about. I did not have any background whatsoever in signals, or science for that matter of any sort, but this intrigued me, and I joined up in Montreal as an RDF mechanic, and went through preliminary basic signals training in Montreal at McGill, at my old university, but this time as an AC buff rather than a student. I transferred to Clinton, Ontario, to a very hush-hush, top secret RAF school in RDF and radar, and there we were taught everything there was to know in radar for those who did not have a scientific background. Then we were told we would be sent overseas. In fact, I was transferred down to an embarkation depot in Moncton in 1942, and to my surprise was called out, along with a few others - we had been interviewed for commissions before we left Clinton but did not think much of it - we were called out and then were told we were then pilot officers.

 

[HILL] That did not mean that you were flying, that meant that you were still in the radar field?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, in the radar field. So we went, all 20 of us, got on a boat together in Halifax, sailed over to the UK, and were transferred to various parts throughout England to radar stations, mostly ground radar stations, CH and CHL stations they called them. Mine was a CHL station right near Hastings, RAF Fairlight, as commanding officer, and with I suppose 60 or 70 people there altogether including RAF gunners to protect us. At that time, flights over from Germany were frequent.

 

Still as a radar officer, I was transferred from there to India in May of the following year, but in India when I arrived, I arrived before the radar equipment, and so I had to spend some time on basic signals, assisting signal's officers of various RAF squadrons at this time in the Madras area, and eventually I got transferred to a radar station in Ceylon. I spent more or less the rest of the war between Ceylon and India, and between ground stations and air stations doing radar as a radar officer, ranging from a tea estate in Ceylon, which must have been the most beautiful spot in the world to spend part of the war, to some pretty crummy accommodations near Calcutta from which we used to fly over the Bay of Bengal, and do air sea rescue and so on.

 

[HILL] It was mainly air/sea rescue presumably. There may have been some naval operations in the Indian Ocean, but not much at that time I guess.

 

[GRANDE] It was all, ours was anyway, air/sea rescue.

 

Part II - United Nations. 1946-52

 

[HILL] I think we will go on now to the United Nations period from 1946-52, and that includes not only your time at the UN in New York but also various phases in Ottawa, I believe. I wondered if you could tell us something about your main jobs in that period.

 

[GRANDE] I was sent down to New York, I guess it was late summer, early fall, of 1947, to be the secretary of the first permanent mission of Canada, we called it the Permanent Delegation of Canada, to the UN. We were all secretaries; third secretary, first secretary, second secretary. I was to be the secretary of the delegation as it was being established under General McNaughton, who was then our representative. General McNaughton was there waiting, as it were, for Canada to be elected to the Security Council where he was to be our first Ambassador to the Security Council, as well as our first Permanent Representative to the UN. I was secretary of the delegation, where my work was at first largely administrative, and then when there was more time, I did a lot of the advising, if you will. We were all advisors in those days, advising the delegation on various subjects, wherever I was assigned. During the General Assembly, I was advising mostly it seemed on the, when it was established, the Ad Hoc Political Committee. It was mostly political and social. I advised Senator Carine Wilson during one session on prostitution and a few things like that on the social committee. A dear lady. But mostly political work, but supplementary political work. There was a lot of high priced help there with me; John Starnes, Harry Carter, John Holmes from time to time, Arnold Smith and George Ignatieff; all under General McNaughton.

 

[HILL] You also represented Canada on the Atomic Energy Commission. I mean the delegation did. Canada was represented at that time.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, that is right. I am not sure of the exact date it stopped meeting. But there was not too much work involved even when I was there.

 

[HILL] I think at that time, if I am not mistaken, the headquarters of the UN, at least to begin with, was at Lake Success, wasn’t it?

 

[GRABNDE] That is right.

 

[HILL] Which is out on Long Island somewhere.

 

[GRANDE] It was the old Sperry Gyroscope Company during the war, the Sperry plant, and they took that over. That is where the daily meetings were held. During General Assembly sessions, the committee meetings were held there too, and the plenary meetings were held at Flushing Meadow, the site of the World's Fair.

 

[HILL] So it was not until a good bit later that the UN moved to its present site.

 

[GRANDE] I was there at the laying of the cornerstone by Truman, of the present building.

 

[HILL] Yes.

 

[GRANDE] All the time I was there we met at Lake Success without too much success.

 

[HILL] I gather the Canadian delegation was housed in the old Baltimore Hotel over the Grand Central Station.

 

[GRANDE] For the General Assemblies, yes. Those of us who were permanently there scratched around and rented accommodation all over New York. A number of us went into a place called Parkway Village, which was a new development only for people connected with the UN, and that is where Ralph Bunche was at that time too, John Starnes, Sidney Frigfeld, myself and other people in our delegation, Arnold Smith. They were all there at the same time in this development.

 

[HILL] One thing that we are trying to get an idea of in this series is the development of Canadian foreign policy with respect to international affairs, in the organization of world affairs, in the effort to pursue international peace and security." So clearly one thing that we are interested in is the thrust of Canadian policy with respect to the United Nations in the periods at the end of the war when the UN was founded, and then in the immediate post-war period when the UN was getting itself established. Also, as you mentioned, Canada was not on the Security Council for a while, because in one of the elections Canada stood aside to allow Australia to go forward, if I am not mistaken. But then, I think it was perhaps in 1947 or '48, Canada became a member of the Security Council.

 

[GRANDE] We became a member on January 1, 1948, for two years. But we set up a permanent mission because we knew we were going to become a member. I think in those days you had a pretty automatic majority vote in the West, and we knew we would have enough votes to be elected. Most of my work was geared to that. I believe that was why General McNaughton was sent there in the first place, a general to head a delegation to a Security Council, I suppose, made sense.

 

[HILL] Could you give us some idea of how Canada's attitude towards the UN evolved over this period. I mean I suppose at one stage I had the idea that initially Canada was full of enthusiasm but this was gradually wearing down towards about '47, or '49 perhaps. But my impression, now, is that it is perhaps a little more complex than that. There seem to be more ups and downs.

 

[GRANDE] There was certainly a tremendous amount of enthusiasm when I went there in '47, and it seemed to a very junior officer that Canadian foreign policy revolved around the United Nations in those days. Everything we did, every decision we took, in fact most of our decisions, were UN decisions. Most of the items on which Canada was required to make a decision or to make a pronouncement had to do with subjects which were being debated at the UN, because most international events, episodes, whatever you want to call them, were being debated there. So, I found a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. Mr. Pearson, of course, was a UN man. But coupled with that enthusiasm for the UN, it was not a sort of enthusiasm to the extent that we thought that this was the solution, that there would never be a war again, that this would lead to one world and all this, not that sort of enthusiasm. It was an enthusiasm for being on the Western team, if you will, and being able to work out common positions, which we thought would make sense in order to preserve peace and promote, in many cases, the independence of nations, such as Israel and Indonesia and so on. But also we soon realized, certainly in that first Assembly in '47 when I was there, that the Cold War had set in with a vengeance. The political debates there were very full of rancour and polemics. I remember well the Vyshinski and Dulles debates. They went on for hours and hours. It was as if the two had been fighting each other in the war instead of being on the same side.

 

We, of course, all rallied around. I cannot remember any great division on the Western side of things in those days. We rallied round the Americans if you will, but at the same time, I do not think we particularly liked the extreme attitudes that were expressed by some American delegates, then as now.

 

[HILL] I think Buzz Nixon the other day made an interesting point on this. He said that most of the officers that he served with in that period were people who transferred the black and white view of the world from when they were fighting Nazi Germany. Now that was gone and now here was the new enemy. The black and white perception was simply to some degree transferred, which perhaps was quite natural. I wonder if there was a bit of that kind of ...

 

[GRANDE] I think there probably was, but not among thinking people, not among those who were steeped and versed in foreign affairs before that, not among people such as Mike Pearson or some of the more knowledgeable people from the State Department. You got somebody like Dulles who was single-minded, yes, and Senator Warren Austin, yes. But I think of Jack Hickerson in the State Department; he was extremely well versed and he knew all the nuances and so on. There were many very able people on the American side of that sort, and on the British delegation as well, and the French delegation, and others, Australians, outstanding people. I do not think they viewed it in those sort of stark terms.

 

[HILL] Yes, but as that period proceeded, while you were involved in UN affairs, gradually as time went on perhaps, particularly in the Canadian case after Mackenzie King retired, the Canadian government and other governments launched what was in effect a rethinking process, which then turned into almost a crusade to establish something new, because they were very concerned about the way the UN was going. That led in to the whole process of thinking about setting up a new organization, which eventually became the North Atlantic Treaty system. Is that more or less how you would see things as having evolved in that time?

 

[GRANDE] Yes. I do not think that they viewed NATO as a substitute for the UN, and that certainly is something, because of the attitudes which evolved at the UN and elsewhere, something which was essential. One heard day after day after day sort of diatribes from the Soviet delegation and the Bielo-Russian delegation, records of what they said, and the others in Eastern Europe, all obviously orchestrated for months. I am sure that had a profound influence on Canadian, American, British and other policy makers in forming NATO. We down at the UN did not get exposed to too much of that, and certainly not at my level. I did not know what was going on. It was kept fairly hush-hush, at a

very senior level, in the days before NATO.

 

[HILL] You mean at the outset?

 

[GRANDE] The preliminary thinking about NATO. I imagine in the Canadian establishment memos bounced back and forth, but only between people like Norman Robertson, Mike Pearson, Gerry Riddell and Escott Reid. They did not reach down to George Grande.

 

[HILL] What was it that made this change in world affairs apparent, I mean to public opinion. I mean I can remember that in that period the newspapers were full of Soviet diplomats saying, "Niet, Niet, Niet" all the time, and of course there was the fact that Eastern Europe was now blocked off from contact from most people. There was very little in the way of human contacts at that time. There was the Iron Curtain. What about Czechoslovakia, too?

 

[GRANDE] Very much so. The Czechoslovakia situation, yes. I forget what the date was when the gentleman was pushed out of or jumped out of the window. That had a profound impact there, and also there were individual cases like the Cardinal Midzenty case that come to my mind. I remember writing speeches for Hugh Lapointe on that but this was taken very seriously by us all. In fact, there were very few things in which we co-operated, were able to co-operate, with the Soviets, even in those days.

 

[HILL] Canada, however, played quite a leading role in the establishment of NATO, at least that is the impression one has, that Mr. Pearson, Mr. St. Laurent were very active in that time. Now I am sure that other statesmen from other Western countries were very active too, but in the case of St. Laurent and Pearson, it did become, or seem to become, virtually a crusade in the end to establish this new system. What lay behind that? I mean here you had people committed to the UN at one point. Of course they saw the difficulties the UN was in. What lay behind this crusade? Was it a desire to preserve Western values, or what was it?

 

[GRANDE] I think basically, you stated it correctly. Yes, it was a fear that things would get worse, as they seemed to be getting at the UN, things would get worse in the world, things would get worse between East and West. I really do not remember referring to East as East and West as West, or saying behind the Iron Curtain and outside it. That impelled it I am quite sure. The fear was that the West did not have any security. Most of us had scaled down our armed forces after the war, as I recall, without consulting anyone, to try and get back to what was thought of as normal, and thank goodness for the farsightedness of the founding fathers of NATO that something was done. I suspect the Americans would have done something anyway but I doubt if they would have done it the way it was done, because they probably would have gone into their own shell again. There was still a large element of that, for some Americans anyway.

 

[HILL] You made a rather interesting comment, just a minute ago, which was that the formation of NATO was largely kept secret, or shall we say it did not percolate down very far, and I read the same thing in a speech by Escott Reid given several years ago. He made exactly the same point that it was all highly secret. So I was wondering, when it eventually became apparent at the UN that this new treaty was being formed, what kind of reception did this get in the UN? I mean, of course, the Western group would know about it, but what about the others?

 

[GRANDE] I do not remember anything specifically in the way of comment from the other side on it. Certainly it was included, the fact and the reasons for it, were included in the sort of ministerial speeches at the opening of the General Assembly in 1950, but I cannot remember anything specific actually.

 

[HILL] Less than a year after NATO was formed, there was the outbreak of the Korean War, and of course the response was from a UN command. The United States played the largest part but Canada was involved, most other Western countries were involved, and also there were other countries; India for example, provided a medical team if I remember rightly. Did this, the fact that the UN was involved in this response, restore some of the UN's lost prestige? Did people feel that the UN had acquired a new purpose, or was the Soviet absence from the Security Council at that time seen very much as a fluke, which was not going to be repeated?

 

[GRANDE] I think the latter. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief that there was a way of them doing this and giving it a UN label, but I do not think it was considered as a great feat for the UN as such. I am not quite sure whether Canada, for instance, would have contributed troops if there had not been a UN cover to it. Maybe with Mackenzie King out of the way we would have eventually, but certainly if he had still been around we would not have.

 

[HILL] When you ended up this phase of your career in late '52, you went back to Ottawa, I believe, to the UN or the Legal Division.

 

[GRANDE] I might mention one thing, a great deal of time was spent in those days in compiling a book called "Canada and the United Nations" each year, 1947, '48, '49 and '50, each year, and fairly senior persons were put in charge of it. I had that honour, I think the year after I came back from the United Nations to Ottawa, and Basil Robinson did it, I think the year before me, and there was a tremendous amount of effort put into this book. I do not know if it still exists or not, but in those days this was a major project. It seemed to be very important to the powers that be in the Canadian government that we record in great detail everything we did at the United Nations, and all the divisions were hard at work for quite a while preparing their various bits and pieces and chapters to this publication, which was an indication of the seriousness with which we took the UN in those days.

 

[HILL] How did you perceive the UN yourself at that time, the time that you left this particular phase of your career? Do you remember how you saw the UN going on from there?

 

[GRANDE] I think we were certainly not optimistic, we were pessimistic about how it would go or continue to go. I think we had higher hopes for its achievements in the economic and social fields than in the political or certainly the military field. The idea of an international force had long since disappeared; of having a truly international force under the UN Security Council, for which provision is there, as you know, in the Charter. But it never got off the ground. But useful work certainly, those were the heydays of the Children's Fund, and then even when I was still in New York, the Point Four Program, the beginnings of technical assistance, the beginnings of international aid, came into being.

 

[HILL] So already by '52 the focus of Canadian policy with regard to international security and peace had in fact shifted to NATO.

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

Part III - Athens. 1952-54

 

[HILL] Well, we will go on then to part III, which was your period in Athens from 1952-54. In that time, you served as First Secretary in the Canadian Embassy in Athens. This was shortly after Greece had joined NATO. It was also not many years after the very bitter Greek Civil War. I think it's hard to realize now just how bitter that was, and how many people were involved in it, also perhaps the poverty in which many people had lived as a result of the miseries of the Second World War and then the Civil War and so on. So Greece was not just a Mediterranean resort at that time, by any means. At any rate, it was certainly not a wealthy country. So I just wondered if you could tell us something of the condition of Greece while you were there. What sort of state was in it and also what were the politics like?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, the government was headed by Marshall Papagos, the military touch if you will when I was there. The Foreign Minister was Stephanopolous, the king was on his throne, with Queen Frederika directing affairs from behind him, and Greece was a very poor country. You could see poverty even around Athens. At the same time, my feeling was that they were greatly encouraged by the Truman Doctrine. That had a profound effect on the Greek people. They were getting substantial aid and had prospects of getting even more if they used their aid wisely. There was a continual flow of American and international bankers it seemed, aid officials and so on, coming in and out of the country, but in particular there was a huge American mission permanently established there whose sole job was to administer economic aid.

 

On the military side, the Greek forces were being built up slowly. I remember Canada played a role in that. I happened to be Charge d'Affaires at the time, and we donated a bunch of our old aircraft when we replaced them. I forget the type of aircraft they were. They were the ones we had been using in Europe, and then we replaced them with a later model.

 

[HILL] The Sabre jets probably.

 

[GRANDE] Yes. We turned them over, some to Greece and some to Turkey, trying to preserve the balance even in those days. This was received with great cheers by the Greek establishment. They thought this was great.

 

The Balkan Pact came into being while I was in Athens. Relations between Greece and Turkey were pretty good, and between Greece and Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia and Turkey, the three of them, the original members of the Balkan Pact. This was greeted with great enthusiasm by all three countries. I remember Marshall Tito paid a state visit, I guess it was, to Athens when I was there. Even in those days, he was cheered by the Greeks as one of the "Free World's" great people. In those days, they had great plans for the Balkan Pact. They thought this was going to be the end of the animosity between these countries, certainly between Greece and Turkey. This was going to be the means of having a modus vivendi which would last between these two countries. How wrong they were.

 

[HILL] Didn't they think it might draw in Bulgaria and Romania as well?

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

[HILL] But nothing ever came of that.

 

[GRANDE] No. But that was certainly being discussed in those formative days.

 

[HILL] Were there negotiations going on at this time over US bases, I mean to put them in there at that time, not to take them out presumably? And what was the role of the Sixth Fleet in the area?

 

[GRANDE] I do not remember anything specific about that. Certainly there was a continual stream of naval visits. I remember Admiral Mountbatten visited Greece when I was there, when I was Charge d'Affaires. He called on me because I was the senior Commonwealth guy there, and Canada was the senior Commonwealth nation. He then was, I guess, in charge of the Mediterranean fleet for the British. There were a number of American visits too and they were always great occasions for us.

 

Certainly no Soviet naval visits. I presume the negotiations were going on there. The American bases had not been established.

 

[HILL] No? That is what I wondered about.

 

[GRANDE] They must have been discussing it, negotiating it for them. But somebody, maybe it was you, mentioned this and I would agree that there was not any specific role for Greece that I can remember in those days, a military role. I mean it was not envisaged that NATO forces from the central front would be moved down to Greece or anything of that sort. I think the role of Greece was just evolving, the military role.

 

[HILL] You mentioned you were Charge d'Affaires. How many people were there in the Canadian Embassy and what were your own duties during most of that time?

 

[GRANDE] In addition to the Ambassador, we had a First Secretary, Third Secretary, Commercial Secretary, an Immigration Officer and team, Security Office, RCMP, and there were two Trade and Commerce officers. The Immigration Office in those days was separate from the Embassy.

 

[HILL] What was the nature of Canadian-Greek relations at that time? Were most of the issues to do with immigration and trade, or were there many political issues as well?

 

[GRANDE] It was mostly keeping a watching brief I think on developments, reporting on them. There was quite a bit of reporting on the Balkan Pact, for instance, on the economic situation. We did not have any economic aid program in those days but we were contributing through the UN, and so they were interested in having reports on it. Immigration was a big part of our program. There was very high immigration from Greece to Canada in those days. Distressed Canadians abroad also, consular work, that sort of thing. Dual nationals going back and being snatched by the Greek government and put in military service, that sort of thing.

 

[HILL] What about the problem of Enosis in Cyprus? Was this already bubbling up and was this beginning to have any effect on Greek-Turkish relations or Greece's relations with the rest of NATO or was this still dormant at this time?

 

[GRANDE] It was fairly dormant when I was there, but it had bubbled up even before I arrived, and bubbled up certainly after I left. It went in waves. The British were prepared. They barricaded themselves in their embassy. Their embassy is just across the street from ours but nothing much happened when I was there on that front.

 

[HILL] One last point I would like to explore a little bit further is the thought that on the Southern flank NATO is quite a different kind of animal, really, from what it is on the central front in the north. On the central front in Northern Europe you have a really integrated, multinational kind of complex. The armed forces are integrated and so on. Whereas on the southern flank in the southern region, what you have mainly is a collection of countries which are geographically quite divided one from another. Their main support comes from outside, i.e., through bilateral support largely from the United States. Also, of course, in the case of Greece and Turkey, their armies now to some degree are facing each other. These are just some thoughts, and I wonder if you would care to comment on them?

 

[GRANDE] I do not know whether there is a battle plan for Greece right now. I presume there are some NATO plans but I am quite sure there were not any in those days. There was still some communist influence in Greece, and there certainly was not a very good feeling between Athens and Moscow, although towards the end of my stay, this seemed to get a little better, an Ambassador arrived and so on.

 

I think that Greece certainly entered NATO for its own security. It wanted to belong to the club. It did not want to go it alone. I think NATO took Greece in, obviously because it wanted to protect its flanks or its under belly or whatever you want to call Greece. But the state of the Greek armed forces was such in those days that they could not play a significant military role. I am quite sure they could not even have defended themselves under direct attack. This was before there was any Soviet bomb to worry about, any nuclear blackmail or anything of that sort.

 

I think that having Greece in NATO then was good for us, if you will, as well as good for Greece. From that evolved a Greece that became accustomed to cooperating with the Western world, the rest of the Western world. I mention with the Western world because there were signs even when I was there in Greece down at the Port of Piraeus saying boats to Europe leave on Mondays or Tuesdays. Greece was not quite European. They did not consider themselves quite Western. They considered themselves Middle Eastern.

 

The basic focus was on the economic side of things, not on the military side.

 

[HILL] You mean as far as relations with NATO were concerned or as far as the Canadian Embassy and its operations?

 

[GRANDE] As far as Greece was concerned, their top priority was to have economic assistance, to get back on their feet after the Civil War, and they thought that by going into NATO, and sort of looking as if they were doing their bit for Western defence, they would get more aid. I think it worked out that way too.

 

[HILL] Did you ever see the movie Elena?

 

[GRANDE] No.

 

[Hill] Well, it's about the Greek Civil War period, which has almost been totally forgotten somehow. But that whole business about thousands of Greek children being taken into Yugoslavia, and then packed off to Hungary at one point, was a dreadful affair.

 

[GRANDE] There was still a latent anti-German feeling there, also. They were still proud of having resisted the Italians too. They did it at the beginning of the war, you remember. They pointed to signs which you could still see chalked up on some cliffs there: "OXI", meaning "No." "No, we will not let the Italians in." But the Germans got in later. They still feel that sort of thing. But because the Balkan Pact was being formed, any sort of anticommunist feeling was kept subdued in the latter part of my stay.

 

[HILL] I think one of the most interesting things you mentioned was that, at that time, relations with Turkey were on the whole quite good. It seems to be really the Cyprus problem which has by and large aroused old animosities. Of course, there are other things now like the Aegean Sea, but it seems to me that Cyprus was obviously crucial.

 

[GRANDE] Oh yes, the crucial factor. Still is. There were no signs of it being settled.

 

Part IV - Berlin. 1957-60

[HILL] Well, I think we will move on now to the next period which is part IV, the years in Berlin from 1957 to '60. Ambassador Grande, in 1957, you were appointed Canadian Consul in West Berlin. You also served as First Secretary and then Counsellor of the Canadian Military Mission in Berlin, if I am not mistaken. I wonder if you could just tell us something about your duties at that time, and in particular what did consular work involve, and what was the work of the Canadian Military Mission? Before giving you a chance to speak, I will just mention that I believe the Berlin Wall had not gone until the summer of 1960.

 

[GRANDE] '61.

 

[HILL] '61.

 

[GRANDE] That is right. All those titles are rolled into one really, it's really just the one body there. I did have some help, sort of a locally employed former British military officer, Dick O'Hagen, not the Prime Minister's O'Hagen, who was there also with me, and eventually I was successful in getting a junior officer towards the end of my stay to act as sort of administrative officer and consular officer, but the military mission was military in name only. It was set up because we had the right to set it up. We thought we should not lose the chance, the right as one of the victorious powers that supplied troops, and so on. We were given the chance of having a military mission that was funded out of the German budget, and it may still be, for all I know. It was funded insofar as we wanted it to be funded from the German budget, the Berlin budget, and that meant that we got free accommodation, both living and office, and all our local staffs, all the local German staff whom we hired, or British, if there was anyone who lived locally, their salaries were paid out of the budget as well, and everything, typewriters, you name it. We saw a chance of setting up an interesting listening-post mission, which was what it was, on the cheap. It was called a military mission because we were supposed to be a military mission, whatever that meant. Each of the Western military missions was in a particular sector, ours was in the British sector, and we were sort of under the sponsorship of the British. Others were under the sponsorship of the French, the Belgians for instance, or the Americans.

 

The work there was fascinating, actually. It was largely political. It was really to tap the British, French and Americans, and get as much intelligence from them as possible, and to pass it on, in foreign dispatches to Ottawa. There was a wealth of material there; some of which you could get officially, and some which you could get unofficially. It was a crossroads of intrigue — still is. When Khrushchev issued his famous ultimatum in November, 1958, I guess it was, saying he was, in effect, going to take over West Berlin, that was the indication. Then all the world came to our doors, we had business from everyone under the sun. We had visits from all kinds of prominent Canadians who wanted to be on the spot. George Drew dashed over from London for instance. Willy Brandt must have spent half his time briefing visitors, I think.

 

[HILL] He was mayor, I think?

 

[GRANDE] He was Burgermeister and a damn good one too. I think it was his finest hour. The other phenomenon which was going on, which eventually resulted in the raising of the Berlin Wall, was the tremendous flow of refugees from East Berlin to West Berlin, and some from other parts of East Germany to West Germany. But these were coming over in increasingly great numbers daily, and I think it came up to 1,000 or more a day, once, before the Wall was built. All of these people were screened by the Allies in West Berlin, by the British, by the Americans, by the French, depending on where they came over, and indeed which sector. From these briefings came a tremendous amount of intelligence on what was going on in East Germany, and what the Soviets were doing and so on. In addition, we had direct contacts. We made a point of having direct contacts with the Soviets but not with the East Germans. We did not recognize the East German regime in those days, and we refused to accept the GDR visa but we acknowledged the Soviet occupation, if you will, even though they did not want us to later on. I remember I called on the Commander in Chief of the Soviet forces within East Berlin, and there was a Soviet Protocol Officer who was very active in and out of West Berlin, a great contact, and we invited them socially, and they came. So there was this sort of opportunity to tap them directly. They did not say very much but you could tell from the way they reacted and so on how they felt. They were obviously trying to maintain a low profile after the GDR was set up, to stay out of the way. We also had contact with the military exchange missions, like "BRIXMIS". The British, American and French exchange missions in East Germany were headquartered in West Berlin but also had their headquarters in East Germany in Potsdam.

 

[HILL] What did they consist of?

 

[GRANDE] They were missions. I remember there was an incident just a few years ago which brought them into the limelight. They were seldom heard of otherwise. They had the right to travel throughout East Germany and all areas that are not banned, and likewise there are Soviet forces in West Germany which have the same right. The British, French and Americans also have the right to do this. We have Canadians attached to these. We did in my day. They dash in high powered cars all over East Germany, and they pick up as much intelligence as they can, mostly about troop dispositions and that sort of thing, and then pass it back. Every now and then, there used to be an incident. We had access to their reports too. So there was almost too much information. There was certainly too much for one person to handle there, and I must say the British were very forthcoming, as were the Americans, the French a bit less so, but they gave us access to what they considered we should know.

 

[HILL] So the main function was really collecting intelligence to report back to Ottawa, so the Canadian government could keep informed on the evolving situation in Berlin, and also in the GDR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

 

[GRANDE] That is right. That is how I conceived it. There was a flag waving function too. I was Mr. Canada there and I did attend the bilateral functions. We had a bilateral relationship with the city of Berlin, West Berlin, but it was mostly flag waving. The Germans in Bonn wanted us to stay there of course, and when we had a retrenchement drive people thought we would shut down in Berlin and get credit for closing a mission. But West Germans would not hear of it. They were willing to pay everything, even what was not already paid, our salaries.

 

[HILL] But it was closed eventually, was is not? Much later on.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, very stupidly, and then it was reopened. It’s open now. In those days, our offices were right in the Olympic Stadium, which was the British military headquarters.

 

[HILL] Was there any function in terms of representing Canada? Was there any common allied council in West Berlin or any coordinating group or anything?

 

[GRANDE] Nothing in which Canada had a seat but we maintained contact. There was still a four-power command thing going, and they did meet occasionally and we got reports on their meetings. There was the Spandau prison of course, which had its own regime.

 

There was the Berlin Air Safety Centre. We kept in touch with them, and then of course, there were all kinds of immigration opportunities there, although the security clearance side was pretty tricky. There was a Canadian immigration mission there as well, separate from our mission.

 

[HILL] If I remember rightly, what happened in the case of Mr. Khrushchev's ultimatum was, he decided he wanted West Berlin to become a "Free City," or perhaps it was the whole of Berlin he wanted to be a "Free City." I cannot remember which. In any event, this was just going to mean they would be an independent or separate entity and presumably not connected to West Germany or perhaps to the allied control system. If I remember rightly he also put on a six month deadline.

 

[GRANDE] There was a deadline definitely, and it was later withdrawn but it was a real worry because everyone knew, and the Allies did not make any pretense about it, that they could not defend West Berlin. It still could not be defended. It could be taken over in 24 hours. The Allies have token troops there, but that is all they are. So there was a real worry, not about losing Berlin so much, although that would have been very bad symbolically, but that, if the Soviets were willing to do that, then this could certainly spark off a much bigger fight and bring the NATO forces into play, and this would be it. The balloon would be up. We were worried for a period, I think almost a year. The other thing.that we watched closely were the various incidents that took place between the Allies and Soviets or the East Germans on the Autobahn. We as Canadian officials, refusing to accept GDR visas, could not use the Autobahn, but we kept closely in touch with the British, French and Americans about all the incidents that occurred, and all of them got a lot of publicity. They were used deliberately by the Soviets and the East Germans to turn on the heat, to put on the sgueeze. They created these incidents because there were cars going back and forth and trains going back and forth all the time between West Germany and West Berlin; and also planes. They did not touch the planes. We had to fly in and out.

 

[HILL] In the period you were there, it was about the last few years of the Eisenhower administration in the US, and this was also the period of the aborted Paris Summit, the U-2 incident and so on. This was a pretty jittery period in East-West relations in many respects. I was wondering how you felt, sitting in West Berlin, about how NATO and how the Allies in general responded to that kind of situation in those years? Did you feel that their policies were fairly well developed or that they were all over the map, so to speak?

 

[GRANDE] On the whole, I think we felt they were right. The U-2 incident occurred just when I was leaving. I remember Willy Brandt gave me a farewell lunch, and I mentioned this being a summit for certain people in Paris but it was my own personal summit being his guest.

 

This is before the Paris Summit which, of course, never took place. Khrushchev circled Paris and then did not go. Back to your question. There certainly was a feeling of solidarity there. There was a great feeling of tension of course all the time in Berlin, but it was excitement; there was not too much fear. There was a feeling of excitement, of Western solidarity, and of being in the last bastion of freedom surrounded by the bad guys. Demonstrations were purposely put on, and military parades, bands and so on, very often by British, French and Americans, partly to boost the morale of the West Berliners, but also to keep up their own spirits I think, and to fly the flag and to show the world; and it was highly publicized. I think the general feeling was that NATO was on the right track.

 

[HILL] You must have watched the negotiation of the Berlin Agreements in the early ’70s with a great deal of interest. I think it was just before you were in Defence Relations in Ottawa. You were probably still Ambassador in Norway at that time. But anyway, I suppose you must have watched them with a good deal of interest, given your previous experience. Do you think that they have made a radical change in that situation? I mean there has not been a Berlin crisis since those negotiations.

 

[GRANDE] Yes. I do not think there will be another Berlin crisis, partly because of the agreements I suppose, but mostly because I do not think the political will can be there. I do not think that is a good place for either side to have a crisis anymore. I think there are many other places where it is more likely. We must also note the growing maturity of the GDR. They no longer want to be considered Soviet stooges, even though they are probably closer in many ways to the Soviet Union than any other Eastern European country. They are flexing their independence muscles a lot these days, and I do not think they would want to be associated with a crisis provoked from their territory.

 

[HILL] That is interesting. Did you travel around the GDR much while you were there?

 

[GRANDE] We could only travel as much as we could on a Soviet permit, and the first year I was there in '57, I was able to get a Soviet visa to travel to the Leipzig Fair. That was the last year that they issued Soviet permits. After that they said, "Sure you could go. I urge you to go but please just go across the border and get a visa from the East Germans." Which we could not do. We did not recognize them, so we did not go. So far as travelling in East Germany was concerned, there was that one visit to Leipzig, which was very interesting. We were also invited by the British, French and Americans to their exchange missions, as I mentioned. They had one of their headquarters in East Germany near Potsdam, not too far from the West Berlin border, and we could go there, and we did whenever we had an opportunity to. Also we had opportunity to rub shoulders with the Soviets because they were always invited too on these social occasions. Otherwise, no.

 

[HILL] I went to Berlin at the invitation of the German government in 1968 on a visit which lasted a week, and I found it absolutely fascinating the way in which the various allied powers still had their own presence. It's a very unique kind of situation. At that time, I did not go into the GDR at all, but several years afterwards, with a parliamentary delegation, I went to a conference there where I spent two weeks in East Berlin, on the other side of the Wall, which was equally fascinating.

 

[GRANDE] I should qualify what I said. I did go into East Berlin often, but not to East Germany. We considered we had the right to go into East Berlin, and we made it a point of going there quite frequently with the Canadian flag flying, or sneaking across at nighttime and attending the opera, which was much better there than in West Berlin in those days.

 

[HILL] Very interesting.

 

[GRANDE] Or going to the museums, which are very good in East Berlin. Otherwise there really was not much to see in those days, just a facade of shops and broken down buildings and poor conditions elsewhere. I have since been back like you. I went last year and stayed for nearly a week in East Berlin.

 

[HILL] It's still a bit stark in the downtown area, but it's perhaps not as stark as it was at that time.

 

Part V - Ambassador to Norway and Iceland, 1968-72

 

[HILL] Ambassador Grande, from 1968 to 1972, you served as Canada's Ambassador to Norway and Iceland. This also must have been a very interesting period in your career since there were a number of important issues involving Canada, Norway and Iceland in that time; several of them related to the relations among these three countries as allies in NATO. Moreover, one thing that is of great interest to people in Canada, still to this day, in terms of relations with Norway, is of course the question of the CAST commitment. I believe that had been set up just before you became Ambassador to Norway.

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

[HILL] I wonder if you could tell us what you know about how that was established and why?

 

[GRANDE] I was not in on the establishment of it. The decision was taken I think in '67, just the year before I arrived in Norway. At that time, I was not involved in that question. I think you are going to see Ross Campbell. He knows exactly how it came into being and he would give you the truth on that. I understood from him later, much, much later that it did not make much military sense in those days to a lot of people but it was sort of forced upon Canada at a time when we were reducing our military contribution to NATO.

 

[HILL] Of course it was not directly connected with the ‘69 troop cuts in Germany. That came a good bit later.

 

[GRANDE] We knew then that this was going to come. We already were in the midst of a great departmental review, I remember, just at the time I went to Norway in ’68. And I think we had a pretty good idea that out of this would come some kind of retrenchment of the Canadian Forces. I arrived in Norway in '68, towards the end of '68, and only then really did I become conversant with what this commitment entailed, and how important it was politically, in terms of Canada's relations with Norway. It was on that that I concentrated, and it gave me an entree to the thoughts of the Norwegians in a way that nothing else would have. It helped me in my work a lot. We were also at that time sending military officers over from time to time. I remember Admiral Collins for instance in the logistics side going over to flesh out the bones of this commitment, and to start talking about prepositioning equipment, and those things, and going through the logistics of where the - Canadian troops would be preparing for exercises and so on. Norway then, and still now I am convinced, thought this was tremendously important to them to have a Canadian commitment there, and even though they were aware how quickly we could come to their rescue in times of need and other questions.

 

That was, I thought, a very happy beginning to my stay, realizing this commitment was there and that we in those days intended to fill it, and it helped me a lot.

 

[HILL] Of course, Canada also had another commitment to Norway, as well, which was through the Ace Mobile Force, and I guess that was in existence before the CAST commitment?

 

[GRANDE] Yes. The Ace Mobile Force used to visit every now and then when they exercised, and the units in various countries used to visit us.

 

The other thing which I found of interest was that there were Canadians on the staff of NATO Northern Headquarters, which is in Kolsaas just outside Oslo, and the commander there at that time was General Walker, but whoever was there would have done the same, I am sure. He used to call us in occasionally and brief us, and take us to his bunker.

 

[HILL] The ACE Mobile commitment is to the whole of Norway, whereas the CAST one is to the North of Norway. Is there any possibility in a crisis that ACE Mobile might be deployed in Southern Norway? I suppose they could be sent absolutely anywhere.

 

[GRANDE] I think they can be sent anywhere. You know it would be deployed in a crisis as distinct from a war situation. That's its main value. But there are certainly some worthwhile targets in the south.

 

[HILL] Did you travel up through the whole of Norway while you were there? I suppose you did.

 

[GRANDE] Yes. I made a point of doing both when the troops were there exercising. We had a visit from Defense Minister MacDonald in those days. I went with him. I also went with my military attache on other occasions, and on my own with some of my colleagues. I took a coastal steamer up to Svalbard one time. Right up to pack ice.

 

[HILL] You got up to Spitzbergen?

 

[GRANDE] Yes. That’s it. We were the first ambassadors to do that, to set foot on it, to exert our rights because we were all parties to the Treaty, to the Svalbard Treaty.

 

[HILL] Oh, Canada is too? I see. Along with the Soviet Union and ...

 

[GRANDE] The Soviet Union, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The Finnish ambassador and I went up there, and the Swedish ambassador, and the American ambassador and the British ambassador, and we invited the Soviet ambassador. He first said yes, and then later declined. All went up together.

 

[HILL] I see.

 

[GRANDE] A memorable occasion to see what it was like primarily, but also to assert our rights.

 

[HILL] Did you also visit the areas where Canadian troops would probably be deployed in north Norway?

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

[HILL] Could I ask what you think of that as a commitment these days?

 

[GRANDE] I have been writing in favour of our maintaining our commitment there, almost like a voice crying in the wilderness. I am told that the decision has almost been made, if it has not indeed been made, that we will withdraw from that commitment but we will probably do so gradually. You know, in accordance with established NATO procedures, it should take several years to really get out of it entirely. And I think that it's to be regretted. The Norwegian Defense Minister, Johan Holst, was just here a couple of weeks ago pleading the case, but they are in a difficult position. They find it difficult to argue with Canada if we say we are making our commitment in Central Europe and we have to withdraw from the Northern commitment; we cannot do both. They want a strong NATO everywhere. I think its incompatible with our Arctic policy, with our emphasis on the North. In many respects we get more credit for that commitment than we do for the one in Germany, because its hard to imagine what the Canadian Forces are going to do there, they're so small. I agree we would have to put some more credibility into our commitment to north Norway if we kept it. We must be able to get there quicker.

 

[HILL] Well, I think in recent years there have been moves in that direction. That would simply be a matter of spending somewhat more money on it.

 

[GRANDE] I gather that General Rogers is in favour of our maintaining our Norwegian commitment.

 

[HILL] Well, we'll wait and see what comes out of the White Paper on that one.

 

Turning now a little bit to Iceland; you were also Ambassador to Iceland at that time. If I am not mistaken, this was also a period of these periodic Icelandic fishery problem. Well, I suppose one should not call them Icelandic fisheries problems. Its a problem of fisheries between Iceland and other people who fish in Icelandic waters, and also this was a very active period in the Law of Sea negotiations, the international, multilateral Law of the Sea negotiations under the UN. What sort of relations did Canada have with Iceland and also with Norway over fisheries and other maritime questions in this period?

 

[GRANDE] On the Law of the Sea question', we had very, very close relations with Norway, particularly between the two principals, Alan Beesley on our side and Jens Evansen the Norwegian legal expert on theirs. They used to meet at their international conferences all over the world, and when they were at home they were constantly sending each others telexes which all went through me. It was refreshing. I mean they both saw eye to eye on most things, and they were both operators, both high powered, both full of energy and full of knowledge, and very able. They were two of the three or four leading lights in this Law of the Sea movement, in the international legal fraternity. So that this was very helpful to the Norway relationship. On sealing, we are also both criminals together if you will. Norway and we used to consult on how we would combat these terrible anti-sealing types, who were saying such nasty things about us when all that our sealers were doing was to continue doing what they had been doing for years, if not centuries, and how could they be so mean. So we were partners in crime. We worked together from that point of view.

 

Iceland in those days had a fishing dispute with Britain, and if anything we were sympathetic to the Icelanders. Also another interesting development then was that Iceland damn near withdrew from NATO when I was there. As a result of an election, they went very far Left. In fact, they had several Communist members in parliament, members of government, members of the Cabinet. The Foreign Minister was not Communist. I got to know him well,' and we kept in very close touch with him, to persuade him to continue to use his influence to keep Iceland in NATO, on solid ground. They heard us, and eventually, in the next election, they swung the other way.

 

[HILL] Of course they had had Communists in parliament right from prior to being in NATO, and then being in NATO was always to some degree controversial in Iceland, at least among certain segments of the population. In fact, right at the beginning of NATO, there were in fact public demonstrations by the Communists and so on against membership in NATO, and then afterwards there was a good deal of concern about the impact of the US presence in Keflavik, particularly on Icelandic ...

 

[GRANDE] ...women.

 

[HILL] Women! I was going to say language and culture.

 

[GRANDE] But they kept the boys, certainly in my stage, in their own camp. They did not wear uniforms if they went into Reykjavik, and they were allowed out sparingly. Basically, Icelandic policy is controlled by very few families. To talk about public opinion, insofar as there is public opinion there, they are in favor of belonging to the Alliance providing they do not have to contribute any troops, just contribute a bit of geography, and they are probably more like the Swedes than they are like the Norwegians in terms of viewing themselves as part of the Western world. They know they are Western but they do not think of themselves as American or British stooges. Nor do they want to be. They are as close to Canada as to any other country, even closer than to Denmark in many respects. They speak of the Icelandic community here in Canada as Western Iceland.

 

[HILL] It was a bit of a lesson for NATO in one or two ways. For one thing, you mentioned Canadian sympathy for the Icelanders in the dispute with the British, and I know there was a lot of sympathy in Scandinavia for the Icelanders, and possibly among some others too. But also there was the lesson that however small a country might be, it does have equality in a very real sense, in that, if it really wants to, it can always pull out of the Alliance if need be. I think that was something that was brought out very forcibly, in that period, inside NATO.

 

[GRANDE] That is right. There was some fear that NATO's secrets would be filtered through the Communist International or something, but I do not think they had great access to military secrets. It's on a need-to-know basis, this information, and the Iceland Government did not really have that much need for military information; as distinct from political.

 

[HILL] Well, I think that was the beginning of this question of what happens if you have Communist ministers in government, which was to come up later again with the Portuguese. There was speculation about that in the '70s about France, and Italy too. But in a way it seemed to have been handled without too much difficulty.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, I think so.

 

[HILL] I mean the question of access to information and so on. It seemed to be the case that they found ways round it. There seemed to be more upset in the press about these things than there ever was inside NATO headquarters or in allied capitals. I am not sure if that is misreading the situation.

 

[GRANDE] I know that the Icelandic Prime Minister who has never been a Communist to my knowledge, was well aware of the problems as presented to the Alliance. He always had a, you know a pro¬NATO, if you will, Foreign Minister, and between the two of them, if need be, they would control access to any information as far the rest of the members of the Cabinet were concerned. So they were conscious of this, at the same time they had to bow to public opinion such as it was at that time, as a result of the election, and have these left wing members of the government in certain positions like fisheries, I think.

 

[HILL] I have a couple of other questions on this period if we have time for them today, or we might leave them till later. From time to time the Soviet Union has mounted diplomatic campaigns aimed at the Scandinavian members of NATO, designed, I think, to raise thoughts that being in NATO is provocative and perhaps they ought to move in the direction of Sweden. There is that whole period of the Bulganin letters, I think, around 1954-1955 perhaps, which was quite a major issue at the time. People watched fairly carefully to see how the Norwegian and other Scandinavian governments would-respond. I was wondering whether there was anything of that kind while you were in Scandinavia?

 

[GRANDE] I don't recall anything like that really, in the period of '68-72. Do you have in mind something?

 

[HILL] No, I don't have anything specific. I was just wondering if there was that kind of concern have been in that period. There may not have been any as far as I know.

 

[GRANDE] No, I don't think so.

 

[HILL]    No.

 

[GRANDE] Norway, when I was there, was concerned about developments in human rights. They are great human rights promoters, the Norwegians, and they are often holier than thou, but they were very concerned about what was going on in Greece for instance. Intra-NATO problems.

 

[HILL] Right.

 

[GRANDE] When the Colonels were in power in Athens, and the Norwegians were very much opposed to this. And in fact, through the Council of Europe they were involved in some proceedings against the Colonels. Norway was prominent in this. They were also very prominent in the developing world, of course, and followed very closely the Biafra war and the atrocities that you have heard of in Biafra in those days. As far as the Alliance was concerned they took their responsibilities very seriously. They at that time were thinking in terms of joining the Common Market, towards the latter part of my stay, and a lot of their resources were devoted to that, government resources, to developing their position and trying to get sympathy. But that didn't detract from their NATO role. They were conscious of how closely they had co-operated with Canada in the days of Halvard Lange and Lester Pearson, two of the Three Wise Men. They wanted to continue the so-called Ottawa-Oslo axis. We both paid lip service to it, but to be frank we didn't get that much encouragement in those days, I didn't from Ottawa, to develop this into anything meaningful. I mean it takes more than cocktail parties and so on to develop a firm axis and we weren't given much meat from Ottawa in those days to help us in that path. But personal relationships were very good.

 

[HILL] It always seemed to me that the Canadian view on Europe is focused on central Europe to a very large extent, I mean I am not just referring to NATO, but in general; and there seems to be very little attention to Scandinavian affairs and certainly to the role of, say, Norway in NATO, even though we have the CAST force at the moment. Still it is not focused in that direction. You obviously felt that there wasn't much interest.

 

[GRANDE] Well, there used to be a lot of visits and social events, but not high profile projects.

 

[HILL] Right.

 

[GRANDE] So they tended to be forgotten. Even today, I was reading the other day you know, there are all kinds of visits going on between Canada and Norway and relationships, scientific co-operation, all kinds of co-operation in various fields, but they don't get much publicity. As far as the two governments are concerned, and the big things, you are right, Ottawa thinks in terms of Central Europe, and of Britain occasionally, rather than Northern or Southern Europe.

 

[HILL] Right.

 

What about relations with Iceland? Are they very important?

 

[GRANDE] I doubt it. There is probably one corner of one desk in External Affairs that deals with Iceland.

 

I think they are lovely people, trusting people and very intelligent, very high literacy rate there, the highest in the world. Every postman has written at least ten books, they say.

 

[HILL] Written them or read them. What about the referendum in Norway while you were there, on membership in the European Community. Obviously that was a big issue. How much attention was paid to it at that time, on the part of the Canadian government? How much of your time was involved in following it, and also why didn't it go through? Why was the result not positive?

 

[GRANDE] A fair amount of attention was devoted by us to it, because we at that time were thinking in terms of concluding a contractual agreement. It turned out to be a contractual agreement with the Common Market. So we were very interested to see whether Norway was going to be involved in becoming a member of the Common Market, and I remember making representations to the Norwegians before the vote on Norwegian membership in the Common Market asking them, if they did become members of the Common Market, would they please take this, this, this, and this into account in considering Canada's position and Canada's desire to have a relationship with the Common Market. The Norwegian government misjudged the mood of the people. All the diplomats including yours truly misjudged the mood of the Norwegian people and we all unto a man prophesied that Norway would join, the vote would be close, but that it would be in favour of membership, Norway would become a member of the Common Market; and we were all wrong, including the government of the day. Basically, the Norwegians were not prepared to go into Europe. There is still a certain distrust of the Germans, of the French, and of the big powers. And yet you can ask me quickly why did they join NATO then. Well they joined NATO in earlier days, they joined NATO right after the beginning of NATO. And security concerns were foremost in their minds in those days. They never regret that. I am quite sure that they will stay in NATO for as long as we will. But they weren't prepared to get completely enmeshed in this movement of a United Europe, they weren't sure they wanted to be in the United Europe. They might go back, they might join. I think there is still a better than 50/50 chance that Norway will join the Common Market for its own economic reasons but not political reasons.

 

[HILL] Were there certain economic interests which were opposed to membership?

 

[GRANDE] The Nordic community was divided of course. Denmark in the event did join, Sweden did not. EFTA was in full swing in those days still, with Finland, Sweden, and Norway, Denmark and the UK.

 

[HILL] Yes, that's right, Austria and Switzerland as well.

 

[GRANDE] If the Common Market had been a Nordic thing, Norway would have joined overwhelmingly. Their first loyalty, their first priority, is Nordic co-operation.

 

[HILL] But I mean, were there some particular segments like the farmers that that were opposed to membership?

 

[GRANDE] Very much. Oh very much. Don't ask me why, the intricacies escape me, I mean sure the farmers have benefitted more than anyone in the membership of the Common Market, but the Norwegian farmers are against it and their fishermen, the rural people are definitely against it; and the business people, by and large, are for it, but they are outnumbered by the non-business people in the country.

 

[HILL] Just one final question: was there any concern on the part of the Allies that rejecting membership might have had implications for Norwegian membership in NATO?

 

[GRANDE] Not concern, no. Maybe among the European Allies. I don't know. Certainly not in Canada. Canada didn't have that concern. I don't think so.

 

[HILL] Well, thank you very much.

 

Part VI - MBFR Ambassador, 1973-76

 

[HILL] Ambassador Grande, this part of our interview will deal with your work as Canada’s representative at the MBFR negotiations in Vienna. In fact, you were, I believe, the first Canadian Ambassador to those talks and you were there in Vienna at what seems to me in retrospect to have been one of the most crucial stages so far in those negotiations. I think it is useful to devote some time to the MBFR negotiations in our present excercise for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think the recent Reykjavik Summit emphasized the importance of conventional force reductions or at least the conventional force balance in Europe, because it is now clear—the West Europeans Allies have made it clear—that they will not be all that happy with very large reductions in nuclear forces unless there is something done to address the question of the conventional balance. Second thing, I think, is that the MBFR negotiations are linked directly to NATO, in a way that many of the other arms control negotiations are not, e.g., it is a much more direct linkage to NATO than, for example, is the case for the CSCE.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, indeed.

 

[HILL] And thirdly, I think MBFR is an interesting case from the perspective of Canadian foreign policy, of Canada working through NATO and related mechanisms for what you might call, say, the general good, that is to say the pursuit of international peace and security, even though the direct interests of this country are in many ways rather limited in that case, I mean in terms of the relatively limited size of the Canadian force in Europe as compared to that of some of the other Allies. And an MBFR agreement might have less of a direct impact on Canada than some of the other Allies, but it is something which Canada has been taking great interest in; of course Canada is a direct participant in the negotiations. Do you have any comment on those points?

 

[GRANDE] I would agree with what you say. In fact the negotiations started after Canada had cut its forces, if you recall, in Europe. The inclination of all of us professionals was to keep the Canadian forces at least at their existing strength or to increase them rather than reduce them. My mandate of course was to contribute to a reduction agreement. So that reinforces really what you say, and it is the only negotiation where arms control or arms reduction are involved which is really being controlled by NATO. I mean as compared with Geneva or something like that, where there is some linkage but not to the same degree.

 

[HILL] The first part that I want to look at here is at the MBFR exploratory talks, and surrounding issues, and then to go on to the actual MBFR negotiations, which started later in '73 and have in fact continued to this day. So, then, we will start with the exploratory talks which began on 31 January 1973 and lasted till 28 June. I wonder, at the beginning, if you could describe a little bit how the talks started. What I am thinking of here is that MBFR, the movement towards MBFR, was quite closely linked to the movement towards CSCE. These were things which arose when Dr. Kissinger went to Moscow with President Nixon, in I think it was June of 1972, to deal with the SALT I Treaty, and so on. Among other things, there was a deal done on the movement towards those two negotiations, which essentially amounted to the dates being set for the multilateral preparatory talks on CSCE, the MBFR exploratory talks, then the full CSCE negotiations, and then the full MBFR negotiations. So, one of the crucial aspects in this was to respect those dates in order to make the agreement stick, so that the movement forward could take place in these two sets of negotiations. But it seems, as I recall it, that this was not an easy period in terms of this forward movement; it didn't take place all that smoothly and easily and in fact, if I am not mistaken, with regard to the MBFR talks, most of the NATO allies expected to go to Geneva until about the last minute, and then they were switched to Vienna. In fact the key thing was that it actually took place on the 31st of January. That was in the Hofberg Palace in Vienna, but that is about all they did at that time. And I wonder if you could tell us something about that period.

 

[GRANDE] Yes. I wasn't directly involved in the preparations leading up to the MBFR exploratory talks but I was there right from the beginning of them. It seems to me though that there was a conscious effort made by NATO and by the other member countries to keep the CSCE, which you mention, and the MBFR, definitely linked together; and, in fact, as I recall, the NATO countries insisted that the Soviets agree to MBFR before they would agree to CSCE continuing. So they made a conscious effort to link these two. Also, we had a kind of friendly rivalry with them to make progress. Now of course they have won in a sense by concluding an agreement and we are still waiting to conclude one. But we were summoned to Brussels in January 1973, the representatives of each of the proposed participants in the MBFR negotiations. At that time we still hadn't had a definite agreement, from the Soviet side, to a firm date and place. Nevertheless we decided to assemble in Brussels at NATO headquarters and to try and do some preparatory work if there was any to be done and to mark time. We did assemble and had a meeting in Brussels and we set up what is known as the Ad Hoc Group of NATO. The representatives on this Ad Hoc Group were those who had been especially designated by their governments to represent them at the exploratory talks. I was the Canadian earmarked for that. I remember at the very first meeting when we sat down there, we didn't have a chairman, we didn't have any agenda, so they went alphabetically. Somebody, I guess somebody in the secretariat, maybe you Roger, said let's start with Belgium, how about Belgium being the chairman but the Belgian hadn't turned up yet, so they went to CA, Canada, so the finger was pointed at me and I became the first Chairman of the Ad Hoc Group. I know that at that stage the American, Jock Dean, was very impatient— we hadn't heard from the Soviets—and he was all set I think to pack his bag and go back to Washington and I had to restrain him and tell him that it would be much better for us to stay there and have a meeting or two and then try and form some kind of a plan of action.

 

[HILL] You said you were designated as the first Chairman of the Ad Hoc Group. What did that entail?

 

[GRANDE] I was trying to get a bunch of assorted representatives to at least agree to sit down together and to decide what they wanted to talk about. We had to peer into the future and decide what we would say to the Warsaw Pact side once we met them at the preparatory talks. But mostly it was an administrative thing. But even at that stage, and it shows how eager the Americans were for progress in those days, the Americans came to the meeting in Brussels armed with three or four position papers in their briefcases which they had worked out in Washington, after consultation with a few countries including Canada.

 

[HILL] There was of course also a NATO negotiating mandate already at that point, which I recall had been worked out the previous summer and which still stood in its broad terms. However, maybe there had been some developments since.

 

[GRANDE] Well, throughout the negotiation—starting at the very beginning—we realized that our mandate was really a tactical one, as distinct from a strategic one.

 

[HILL] The mandate worked out in Brussels the previous summer was a strategic one.

 

[GRANDE] Sometimes that line became blurred. But at any rate, we went back to Brussels and we finally did get a reply from the Soviets saying, "Okay, we will meet you on the 31st of January 1973, but we won’t meet in Geneva. We suggest we meet in Vienna". So there was a hurried consultation again between capitals and ourselves in NATO and the Council too, I guess, and we quickly agreed to the date and place. We had to cancel everything in Geneva and arouse our ambassadors in Vienna and tell them we were going to descend upon them. And so we did pack our bags and go to Vienna for the opening meeting. We didn’t know where we were going to meet; we didn’t know what the format would be or anything. We just knew that we were going to meet somehow or other with the Warsaw Pact representatives in the city of Vienna. Do you want me to go on?

 

[HILL] I wonder if you would tell us a little bit about that first meeting. The story is always fascinating.

 

[GRANDE] I don't remember all about it. I do know we tried to make some contacts. We, as an Ad Hoc Group, met in Vienna as soon as we all had arrived. The meeting place, of historic interest, was the American Embassy Conference Room to begin with. And later on we occasionally went to the German Embassy or the British Embassy, but we usually ended up in the American Embassy. Later on during the remaining talks the Ad Hoc Group got its own accommodation and you remember we had our own conference room and so on which was run by the secretariat representatives. Well, we did make some preliminary contacts, through the Embassies, with the Soviets; and it was agreed with our Austrian hosts that we would meet in a huge room in the Hofburg Palace. Not the one where they now meet, a much older and less glamorous room as I recall. And we agreed to a time - say 2:30 - and a place, so we had that. Before the appointed hour we all drove up and the Austrians were there at the entrance with laissez passers which they were handing out right, left, and centre—they didn't know us from a hole in the ground and we didn't know them. Anyway, the Austrians were in control, and we marched into the room because we didn't know what the format would be before we got there; and it was a horse shoe shaped thing with I suppose 15 or so rows of chairs going up to the front of the horse-shoe. So, as we arrived we dashed to the nearest row of chairs that were still vacant and made no attempt to go in alphabetical order or anything else, except that the Soviets had grabbed the last row, they wanted the last row I suppose, and the Americans grabbed the one next to them. I guess we were up in the first 3 or 4 delegations I think, if that makes sense for Canada, CA. So I found myself I think next to the Bulgarian on one side and I think Hungary, I forget, maybe Hungary. These were all the potential participants; both what later became the indirect and direct participants were there. And so after everyone seemed to be seated there wasn't any chairman; there was a microphone out there but there wasn't anyone there. We hadn't agreed to anyone being chairman, so the first person in the row on the left hand side started to speak and said I represent the delegation of whatever it is. My memory recalls that this guy was a Bulgarian, but I might be wrong. And he spoke out, I think, in his own language. We didn't have translation at that time. I was about the third, I think, and I said I was with the Canadian delegation and I was happy to be here, and we have a mandate to make this conference succeed and insist on these things being fulfilled, all this sort of baloney without any prepared text or anything because we didn't know that we were going to speak. So it went, right around the table and the last one said it looks like I am the last one I think, the American, no the Soviet, and we will meet again some time. That was it really.

 

 

[HILL] What about the question of the Austrian Foreign Minister who came in?

[GRANDE] Yes, that's true. But this was in a different room, an ante-room. We were alerted that he was going to come in and welcome us. But he didn't stay and he was quite right not to stay. He just welcomed us to his city. Again there wasn't any translation so I am not sure what he said.

 

[HILL] So then you adjourned after this first meeting for quite a while, I think, and then you really went to work for sometime in the Ad Hoc Group, in other words preparing for the next meetings and making informal contacts and so forth.

 

[GRANDE] That's right. The informal contacts took place. We decided who would try to make contacts; it was obvious the Americans should be there and one other usually in contacts with the Soviets. I made contacts with the Czechs and somebody else would make contacts with the Poles and so on. But what we had to decide was what our programme would be and how often we would meet together and what we would discuss and so on. Because the purpose of these meetings, preparatory meetings, exploratory meetings was to try and decide on a mandate for our formal talks, for formal negotiations, force reduction negotiations. Eventually we got agreement—it wasn’t with too much difficulty—an agreement to having meetings, I think preliminary meetings the same as now, I guess, once a week, and to having informal meetings of two or three members on each side, to take place in between the preliminary meetings. These were to be rotated, East-West, and as it turned out these took place in peoples' homes. At that time most of us were in hotels, so we used our hotel rooms or our respective embassies.

 

[HILL] With regards to the actual exploratory talks between East and West, as you mentioned, one of the objectives was to work out a mandate for the eventual complete, full negotiations. This meant working out how the meetings would take place, where they were to take place, and so on. But you mentioned also the question of direct and indirect participants. What about this issue of participation?

 

[GRANDE] Well, I don't know exactly when it was decided, on the NATO side, but everyone seemed prepared to accept the fact that only those with troops stationed in the reduction area - the reduction area had still to be defined and agreed, the controversial point being whether or not Hungary was to be included in it — that those with troops in the agreed reduction area, whatever that came to be, should be direct participants, full time direct participants, because they have every right to be fully involved in matters which would affect their troops or their territory in their reduction area. Those with troops and those with territory in the proposed reduction area would be direct participants. Other members of both alliances would also be present at the meetings and were called indirect participants. You will recall that France decided not to participate although they were invited to do so, and Iceland of course didn't, they did not have troops and so don't. Portugal came and went, depending on the domestic situation in their country, during the talks, during the negotiations. The Warsaw Pact side went through the same sort of procedure. At the plenary meetings, the indirect participants had the right to speak just as much as the direct participants. We never had any voting, so it didn’t come down to a the question of who had a vote and who didn’t. It was the same in the Ad Hoc Group. The indirect participants spoke just as much and I suspect more and more often than the direct participants. So the distinction was there, but it didn't mean that much.

 

[HILL] I think Portugal actually didn't attend the plenaries, the actual conference, but it did attend the Ad Hoc Group, if I am not mistaken.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, they did attend the Ad Hoc Group except when they had their problems at home. At those times, they left, as you may recall, and then it was a very ticklish matter with NATO. However, the ambassador there was very understanding. He knew that the other allies didn't want the left wing members of the Portuguese government to have access to all of our secrets. We kept the ambassador informed and he didn't ask questions he shouldn't have asked.

 

[HILL] I wonder if we could just look briefly a little bit further at the negotiating machinery, because I think this is quite interesting in terms of the linkage between MBFR and NATO. As I recall it, I think it was a case that you had the plenary sessions in Vienna which were attended by the participants, then you had the Ad Hoc Group as their caucus. The Ad Hoc Group got broad instructions from the NATO Council, but it also got instructions directly from capitals on the tactics. I think you already mentioned that there were some kind of basic principles, but was there sometimes a conflict between tactics and strategy?

 

[GRANDE] Well, in fact there weren't that many instructions sent on tactics. As it evolved, they had a lot of high priced help in Vienna on the Ad Hoc Group. Particularly the Americans had an ambassador, plus Jock Dean, plus the Secretary of the Army Stan Reiser. Others had equally high priced delegations there. So we in the end decided our own tactics. If we felt that they needed the blessing of governments' or the NATO council we would seek it. Policy instructions did come from government, through the NATO Council, but also direct from home. Maybe some delegations got different instructions directly from their own governments, as compared to those they received through the NATO Council. But we didn't often have any problems in that regard.

 

[HILL] In fact, the detailed tactics of dealing with the Warsaw Pact on a day-to-day basis, were presumably then worked out in the Ad Hoc Group.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, they were worked out in great detail in the Ad Hoc Group. We decided there who would speak in the next plenary session, on behalf of NATO. One always spoke on behalf of NATO as well as for his own government. I should have mentioned that these plenary meetings were public. That was the purpose of them. They were the only meetings in which a formal record was kept. Following them, we had press conferences. Each side had a designated press spokesman. In our case it was traditionally the Dutch. But in the Ad Hoc Group we decided who would speak and what he would say. In some cases, if I knew I was going to have to speak, I would maybe present a draft to the Ad Hoc Group and they would go over it with a fine tooth comb. If we had time we might send it back to our governments for approval, or we might not. And also, and more importantly, I suppose, the Ad Hoc Group decided on the tactics of the informal negotiating sessions with the Warsaw Pact. This was in great detail again, deciding exactly how far they would go. We used to have drafts of what we would call "talking points", and went through these with a fine tooth comb. Different delegations drafted them initially, but then they were worked on, and agreed to, before these informal negotiating sessions took place. Then we would also decide who would attend the negotiating sessions, the informal negotiating sessions, which were the real nitty gritty of the conference. In our case, the Americans, we recognized, had to be present at all of them, and they were. The British and Germans were present very often; the Canadians, Dutch and Belgians less often; and so a sort of format developed - it wasn't a formal format, we could change it and we did often. The indirect participants never did participate in the informal negotiations.

 

[HILL] There were also, in the Ad Hoc Group, representatives of the NATO civil and military authorities.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, that is interesting. I am not quite sure how it was worked out with the Austrian government, to protect their neutrality. Actually I don't think they came formally, as NATO representatives; they used their own passports, I guess. The Austrians knew they were there, obviously.

 

[HILL] They were on the diplomatic lists of the different countries. What I recall is that in the early stages there was no diplomatic protection or anything, they simply turned up there. These really were alliance-to-alliance, or bloc-to-bloc, negotiations, which is presumably why the French did not want to join them.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, very much so, although we did keep the French informed. If they didn't like what was going on they quickly let us know somehow or other.

 

[COX] Did you have any deviants? Did the footnote countries add footnotes as it were?

 

[GRANDE] Not that I recall, not in those early days. Not really, David.

 

[COX] I was thinking of other individual countries getting restless and deciding to strike out on their own and perhaps taking their own initiative.

 

[GRANDE] We had a deviant, in the person of the Belgian ambassador at one time, but I don't think it was a government deviance. I think it was just the man, you know he was in effect being told what to do from time to time. We had that sort of fellow but it wasn't a governmental thing.

 

[HILL] I think the point there is that, that was the function of the NATO Council. When there were people who had different ideas, they put their ideas into the hopper in the NATO Council. And that is where the basic negotiating mandates were hammered out. So there was an immense amount of consultation that had gone on prior to this, to the start of negotiations, over a period of about a year. And, of course, that continued to go on and has done ever since, I guess, both in the NATO Council and in the various political and military committees in NATO.

 

[GRANDE] As you say, the NATO Council was where our Governments worked things out before they reached us. We tried to maintain -- and I think we were very successful in doing so—an atmosphere of unity and alliance cohesion.

 

[COX] So, did you feel that this was a procedurally sound way of approaching the negotiation?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, it isn't easy, and the fact that there hasn't been an agreement may or may not justify it in retrospect. But I don't know what else they could have done, and it worked out very well in those early days. I don't know later on whether it did or not. We did of course visit Brussels every so often. There was a procedure developed where the Council was briefed about once a month, I think, more often if anything was happening, not quite so frequently if nothing much had happened. But the Council agreed to the specific dates and we always sent a little team there, and we divided that task between us; two or three of us used to go and represent us and so on. We worked out what we were going to say in the Ad Hoc Group before we left for Brussels, and briefed the Council in person there, and this was felt to be useful, certainly by us, and I think by the Council and by the Secretary General who could see who Grande was, and who Bill was, and so on, and ask questions. We had question and answer sessions after the briefing of the Council. You must have been at some of those.

 

[HILL] I was at the Council meetings but of course being in the Secretariat, I didn't report to it. We sent telegrammes directly to the Secretary General, that was our means of communication.

 

[GRANDE] And yet another aspect of these informal negotations was the bilaterals and these weren't very formally structured. If I wanted to see the Czech ambassador I would phone him direct and arrange to take him out for lunch or something; and the same thing happened several times with other delegations often on the same day and so on. When we gathered in the Ad Hoc Group one of the first things we did was to report on our bilaterals. The Chairman would say, anything to report on your bilaterals, so we would say we had lunch with so and so and he said so and so about this or that item on the agenda or I think he meant this or he tried to tell me something and so on. This was useful. I don't think I have mentioned yet, but I think you did, that the military representatives were there on each delegation too, and they had bilateral contacts with their opposite numbers. This was the first time ever, I think, that it had been done on a regular basis between the two alliances. It is still the only place where they meet regularly, which is quite remarkable.

 

[HILL] So, on the whole, you feel that the machinery worked fairly well.

 

[COX] I don't want to get ahead of you, so stop me if you wish. I wondered if you could say a bit more about the Soviet and the East European approach. Could you categorize their approach in terms of, not necessarily substance, but how you saw the negotiating stance. Was it completely wooden for example?

 

[GRANDE] It was pretty rigid. But right from the very beginning they objected, as you will recall, to the phrase "mutual and balanced force reductions", and they didn't agree at all to what they thought we meant by balance - and they were quite right, that is what we did mean. We meant by balanced reductions that they would reduce more than we would; because they would be starting off from a higher, a much higher level. So they never agreed to that, they reject that till this day. Whenever I meet them, and I still meet some of them, which is interesting in itself, they refuse to call it MBFR.

 

[HILL] Of course the official title of the talks is still not MBFR. It is Negotiations on Conventional Force Reductions in Europe, and Associated Measures, or something like that. No one can ever remember it.

 

[GRANDE] Mutual imbalance, no? Reduction of forces and arms in Central Europe and associated measures.

 

[HILL] Something like that.

 

[GRANDE] I didn't see any evidence of flexibility, except there was a general desire in the early days to succeed. I think we detected this on the Eastern side as well as on our own. I guess this reflected the general East-West atmosphere at that time, which was pretty good, hopeful in the early days. They went out of their way, I think, on a personal level, to be friendly and so on. For the first time I suppose many of them were allowed loose, as it were, individually, on us Westerners, and we had some very very interesting talks with them. We really didn't detect any more of a flexible position on the periphery than at the centre. The Hungarians were always very forthcoming — they wouldn't say anything, I suppose Moscow didn't want them to — but they were less inclined to stone wall. My opposite number, and this often happens in Canadian diplomacy, I am not sure why, was the Czech. Czechoslovakia is in their mind often compared to Canada, I think, and I have noticed this throughout my diplomatic career. I became really friendly with the Czech ambassador, the first one anyway, and I have maintained my contact up to right now. He is now the Deputy Head of the Foreign Department of the Central Committee. He is in the big leagues now back home. He was here just a few days ago and I saw him.

 

[HILL] It's maybe because both countries begin with C.

 

[GRANDE] At the United Nations in the old days we were palsy walsy with the Byelo-Russians for the same reason.

 

[HILL] Well, once in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, I got extremely friendly with Comoros. But no sooner had we made good contacts with them, than a new member came in. Cap Verde was stuck in between us, so all that work went down the drain. Not quite, because the contact remained.

 

[GRANDE] Cambodia is another case.

 

[HILL] I am glad you put that question about differences of attitudes of the Eastern groups, David, because I would like to go on and ask a few questions about varying perceptions or policies in the Western group in this period of the exploratory talks. I have the impression that by and large you felt the NATO group succeeded in working out fairly reasonable, well-constructed, common positions with which they could deal with the East. But then, nonetheless, there were differences of perception. I mean if one took for example Turkey's radically different strategic position, as compared with Canada's, there are bound to be differences of perception and policy. So I wondered if we could look at one or two of the main differences, at different countries and their particular policies, starting with the United States, which is obviously, as you mentioned, a key factor in this whole process. Was it your impression that at the beginning of the exploratory talks, including the run up period to them in the last part of 1972, and then in the early part of 1973, that the US was keen to move quickly?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, it definitely was. They showed evidence of this by- coming very well prepared with position papers already worked out on a number of subjects. They drove us hard, as it were, in Vienna. We had meetings at all hours of the night and day if they were required, and although there were happy social occasions, even these were used for substantive purposes. They were flooded with instructions, they had a huge delegation at one stage, the Americans, they had all the government agencies right there on the spot, so they could almost make their own policy there; they had arms control and disarmament agency representatives right there, they had the CIA right there, they had all kinds of people from the State Department, both on the bilateral side, and even those on the economic side occasionally; and so they were sparing no effort. They used to fly back on special occasions to Washington in a special plane provided to them by the U.S. government, a U.S. military plane, fly back to Washington for special consultations when necessary. Later on in the exercise, a couple of years later on, they weren't able to get their special plane. Which is just one example of how much they counted in the bigger picture. At that stage they counted very much.

 

[HILL] Why was there this sense of urgency on their part, in your view?

 

[GRANDE] Well, I don't know. The exploratory talks were just before Watergate, weren't they?

 

[HILL] Yes, before Watergate started.

 

[GRANDE] And it was after SALT I, in fact there was a big plaque up about this in the American Embassy conference room. I guess they just wanted to keep rolling, they wanted to build up the detente. It was the prevailing mood. I don't think anyone in NATO disagreed.

 

[HILL]    There is a theory that, in fact ...

 

[GRANDE] You know, there is the theory they wanted to run the world bilaterally with the Soviet Union, there is that theory of which there was some evidence, I guess, because it seems to me, if I recall, the Americans did negotiate some treaty secretly with the Soviet Union on nuclear war prevention, without consulting NATO.

 

[HILL] That was essentially what I was driving at, because there is a book by James Chase, who used to be the editor of Foreign Affairs, who has the argument that the U.S. was following what he referred to as "the new American foreign policy", which was to establish close links with the Soviets and then form some kind of pentagonal world structure with a united Europe, Japan and China. That all went by the board subsequently because of Watergate, but it is always very hard to pin down if it was more imagination on somebody's part or not.

 

[GRANDE] Well, in very general terms from that perspective in Vienna, the Americans went all out to try and make this thing succeed. They spent a terrific amount of energy and time and personnel resources and so on, to tell their allies as well as their opponents that they were the ones who counted. They did establish a very good relationship with the Soviet delegation in Vienna. Very convenient. Whether that was because of the personalities or because of other things, I don't know.

 

[HILL] You mentioned personalities.

 

[GRANDE] Jock Dean had this special relationship with the Soviets from the negotiations he did in Berlin.

 

[HILL] Right, was that with Khlestov?

 

[GRANDE] Yes. So they knew each other. Khlestov was the Soviet ambassador.

 

[HILL] And had Khlestov been in Berlin for the Berlin negotiations?

 

[GRANDE] I think he was involved in them.

 

[HILL] As an ambassador on the spot, did you get any assessments from Ottawa of where US policy was going at that time? I am sure you got assessments of where Soviet policy was going, but I wondered about US policy. Clearly Dr. Kissinger was a major force in world affairs, as was President Nixon. So, did the policy people in the department do analyses on what the US was on about at this time?

 

[GRANDE] I don't remember receiving any. We did go back when our good government would afford it and we did come back to Ottawa occasionally, but not often enough. That gave us some opportunity for us to pick people's brains.

 

[COX] You didn't have special planes to come back home?

 

[GRANDE] No, Sir.

 

[HILL] But, I mean, the main mode of figuring out what was going on as far as the US was concerned, was really one's own judgement and conversations with US and other allied colleagues.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, there was a lot of that. I mean, inevitably you formed your own friendships and you might line up the German ambassador who is here now in Ottawa. He wasn't at the preliminary talks, but he was there later, Ambassador Behrends. So the Germans always have views on the Americans, Canadians listened to them and chipped in whatever they thought. It was the same with the British of course. We were close to them.

 

[HILL] One last question on the Americans. Prior to 1971, I think, there had been the Mansfield Amendment, and this question of unilateral reductions in US forces. The Mansfield Amendment was defeated, but certainly there was a great feeling of pressure from the Mansfield Amendment on the MBFR process; and right from the beginning people were very conscious of that. Then a new Mansfield Amendment came up in the middle of '73, which was again defeated. But was there any feeling of that during the exploratory talks? Did you get any sense that that was what was driving the US delegation?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, certainly it was one of the things that was driving it, and they didn’t try and hide it. We all read our New York Herald Tribunes regularly and it was all in the front pages. But the Soviets were equally, of course, acquainted with that, and you knew they weren't making any concessions at all because of that. Nor were we, except that we were in high gear in those early days trying to get a quick agreement. I don't know how important this was.

 

[HILL] What about the policies of the west Europeans in this period, I mean in general. I don't want to explore every single west European country, but what about the Germans, say, and the Dutch? How keen were they to get agreements, or did they want to slow things down a bit?

 

[GRANDE] There is no evidence right at that sharp end there of any country trying to slow it down. Sometimes the Italians, who were indirect participants, argued at great length over what seemed to us to be unimportant points, but I mean that was their whole raison d'etre, to worry about the flanks. And they had instructions, so their government canvassed us very carefully. I remember long long harangues from the Italians but we were all very patient and just heard them out. The Belgians didn't seem to have any specific instructions; I think they were given a pretty free hand. The Belgian ambassador got to be a bit of a nuisance sometimes. The Dutch had a very interesting guy who subsequently died; Bryan Quarles. He was their First Ambassador. He helped considerably. He was very good. He helped our team to get agreement on the mandate of the talks. He did quite a remarkable piece of work there along with Jock Dean. The British, I think, weren't too enthusiastic in the early days, but this is British reserve. It had its place to play in these negotiations and they had lots of experience to throw into the exercise. The Germans were hard working as always, and viewed themselves very seriously, and had very good people there, and played their full part, I think, as they should have, considering the considerable territory and troops that were involved.

 

[HILL] There was this keenness to get movement, but nonetheless the exploratory talks went on for five months. What about the linkage to the negotiations going on in Helsinki at that time, the CSCE multilaterals there? Was it the case that the MBFR exploratory talks couldn't wind up before the Helsinki talks wound up?

 

[GRANDE] I wasn't conscious of that. History books might prove me wrong, but I don't recall any sort of deliberate waiting for them.

 

[COX] Were you very much in touch with the CSCE negotiators?

 

[GRANDE] No, we sometimes bumped into each other in the halls of NATO, but we worked in direct contact with the Ad Hoc Group. However, we used to repeat our External Affairs telegrams to them and they repeated their telegrammes to us. In that sense, we knew what was going on.

 

[HILL] Did you feel that the talks went along fairly smoothly? Did you achieve what you wanted to do, more or less within a reasonable time frame?

 

[GRANDE] Well, in the exploratory talks, we had no idea we were going to have to stay there 5 months. Everyone expected to stay for 6-8 weeks, something like that perhaps. Certainly it came as a great surprise that it lasted that long. We were all pretty well exhausted after that because we had all just made temporary arrangements for accommodation and so on — no families. Regarding the main conference, once again no one knew how long it would last. But by then, after the five-month exploratory talks, those who went to the beginning of the main conference were prepared for a long road. They were certainly right.

 

[HILL] Well, now I would like to move on a bit to the actual MBFR negotiations, that is from the exploratory talks to the full-' scale negotiations which began on 30 October 1973. Ambassador Grande, you were associated with them until 1976, and in that time both East and West made a number of specific reduction proposals. There were initial Western and Eastern proposals in 1973, one again for each side in the winter of 1975-1976, and eventually two more, one from each side, in ‘78 and ‘79. Gradually, the two sides moved towards acceptance of what is called a manpower common ceiling of 900,000 personnel on each side including 700,000 ground troops and up to 200,000 air personnel. In fact, the two sides did at one stage agree on this, but they have remained apart on such issues as data and verification. This is all described in John Keliher's book: The Negotiations on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions: the Search for Arms Control in Central Europe. On pages 81 and 87 he lists the proposals in tabular form. What I would like to get at here are not the details but some of the underlying issues of the negotiations, how they were affected by general trends in East- West relations and so on. For example, it seems to me that the stagnation or the slow down in the negotiations from the middle of 1973 was not so much because of the negotiations themselves, or the issues themselves, but rather because of surrounding political circumstances. There was of course the Watergate affair, which had already broken out in the middle of *73, then the Middle East War at the end of ’73. How would you assess the developments of that period in terms of the rate of negotiations?

 

[GRANDE] Watergate certainly affected things. I guess it affected everything. It certainly affected the Americans, as I recall, and this was perhaps more so in early '74 than in the fall of '73. They seemed to lack the type of instructions that they wanted on the spot there. They had the impression that the people back home just didn't have the authority to provide them. That was very evident. I can just presume that this all stemmed from Watergate; other things were on their minds. Priority given at the very beginning, which was obvious, to MBFR, came to dissipate, was no longer there in Washington. Survival was uppermost in the mind of their President.

 

[COX]     Then there was the change in administration.

 

[HILL]    Right.

 

[GRANDE]  That's right.

 

[HILL]    President Ford came in.

 

[GRANDE] But the change in administration didn't really affect the American delegation. It kept the same Ambassador (Resor). Resor stayed on and Jock Dean of course was there throughout it all. If I were to give a sort of generalization, there was nothing, no obvious, too obvious effect on Vienna of outside events, and I suppose that was because we weren't getting very far anyway. There weren't any decisions to be taken or even concessions, obvious concessions to be made in Vienna at that time. It turned out to be a very tough, slow slogging match when you open the record. There wasn't any possibility, it soon turned out, of getting a quick agreement.

 

[GRANDE] I didn't notice any difference in the Soviet side. Again, they had the same people. They had Khlestov, who was a very dynamic, very bright guy and apparently held in high regard in Moscow. He was their legal advisor; he was a very skilful guy; he remained pretty well consistent in his attitude throughout the four years I was there. He left the same time as I did, so he was there the same length of time I was.

 

[HILL] Relating back to CSCE, in 1975, while you were in Vienna, there was the Helsinki Final Act and of course that contains some elements of military security, such as the CBMs and so on. Did the fact that they were able to arrive at an agreement in Helsinki have any impact on MBFR?

 

[GRANDE] Well, we periodically raised CBMs, that's what we meant by Associated Measures in the title. The conference raised the issue and it reminded them of it. I think we could have probably had an agreement on Associated Measures if there was supposed to be an agreement on anything, among the very first agreements, and particularly after the CSCE Helsinki agreement. We used that as a lever to try and get one on Associated Measures. In Vienna it was never clear how the two would mesh, who would supervise it and so on, and the Soviets in Vienna didn't seem very enthusiastic about pursuing the Associated Measures. It was something which the West was pushing in their minds and therefore there was something wrong with it from their point of view, i.e., they would have had to open up more than they wanted to.

 

[COX] I wonder if you could just pursue that a little bit. Were there indications the Soviets would not allow on-site verification?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, from the time I was there there was no question, there was certainly no authoritative statement made by the Soviets at all, considering inspections as anything more than an espionage operation by the West.

 

[HILL] And would on-site inspection have been indispensable from the point of view of the West?

 

[GRANDE] It depends on what we are talking about you know; if it were a token agreement between the Americans and the Soviets, then probably not. But if it were a comprehensive East-West agreement, yes. I don't know when national technical means came into its own. They didn't talk about it that much in those days.

 

[COX] I don't think that national technical means of '74-'75 would have done the job as far as troop reductions were concerned. You might have been able to, at that time, reduce tanks, but even then it would have been I think a very tricky operation.

 

[GRANDE] Well, my feeling confirms that I guess. We certainly felt in the Western side that we absolutely had to have that on-site inspection. We never reached that stage. We didn't have an agreement to worry about inspecting or verifying.

 

[HILL] The impression I get is that while you were in Vienna working away on the technical aspects, the steam had gone out a little bit of the forward movement which had been there earlier. I mean, maybe you all felt that eventually there would be another burst of forward movement or was that not the case?

 

There was always that hope when we broke up for a recess. You know, the format was that you had, what was it, three rounds of talks a year or maybe four, but I think it was three, and a fairly lengthy recess in between each round. There was always the hope as we broke up that each side would come back with new instructions, better instructions. I mean we urged the Soviets to go back and re-think and we usually tried to plan a proposal of some consequence, to be made just before a break-up so that they could then take it back to Moscow and hopefully come back in agreement. They never did. It didn't work out that way but there was always that hope. Likewise we among ourselves hoped we would get more forward-looking instructions out of our capitals which we could use in advancing the negotiations for the next round, for the round to follow. But it didn't work out that way.

 

[COX] So you started to see it as a long slog. How did you as a diplomat deal with that? I mean, when there is not much political impetus from capitals, there must be a tendency to go into low gear, perhaps to become less watchful than one might be in times of a sense of great movement and so on. Can you stay optimistic, can you keep people alert and fully involved in those things?

 

[GRANDE] I don't know. This is the first time this has happened this way, I think. No, I think we remained as watchful as ever. I think in the early days we felt that this exercise was in itself worthwhile whether or not we ever reached an agreement, to have for the first time representatives en masse of both alliances meeting daily and in daily contact with each other at all levels, all levels of the diplomatic rank structure and right up to ambassadors, including also the military. I guess we viewed this as a kind of confidence building measure, and I think it was. It has since often been suggested that this should be the basis for a crisis control centre, East-West crisis control centre. There was such an amazing amount of information gathered through bilateral contacts as well as the multilateral ones in Vienna over the years. So I think we felt that we did something to prevent an increase in tension and confrontation, if not outright warfare. So we felt that the exercise was worthwhile in itself even if we never reached an agreement. The purpose of the conference was that we reach an agreement, so we kept on trying to have an agreement of some sort. In later years much more emphasis went into trying to have a token agreement than to begin with. Still, what they are working on now as far as I know is an initial, token agreement.

 

[HILL] What about this data and verification question? It seems to have been a major stumbling block. Now we are coming to questions of substance. Reflecting back on that, do you think there are prospects of an MBFR agreement still?

 

[GRANDE] I think, peering into the future, as I understand it from my unclassified position for the last seven years, the big emphasis now is on these Atlantic-to-the-Urals talks which the Soviets have proposed, and which the NATO Council has picked up and expanded on. NATO is now trying to negotiate on the mandate for these with the Soviet side in Vienna at the CSCE or in the corridors of CSCE. If a mandate is agreed for these talks, which would embrace all the countries of East and West Europe, not just those with troops who are stationed there, then I cannot see MBFR continuing separately from these other talks. I do not think there is work for both of them to do or the will, thank God. The format that I could envisage is in effect MBFR continuing more or less as it is under the new name. The Americans are adamant in wanting the new talks to take place only between those countries that have troops which will be affected. Under no circumstances will they accept neutral/non-alliance countries having a say in determining what is to be done with U.S. forces in Europe.

 

[HILL] In other words a sort of two-tiered negotiation.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, a two-tiered negotiation. CSCE for everyone, and then new negotiations on conventional arms control for the members of the two alliances.

 

[COX] The Soviets have expressed some preference, at least informally, for having the NNAs in the negotiations.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, that is true. That is what the Americans do not want. I do not know what the Canadian view is. About halfway ...

 

[COX] ... half way towards the neutral position.

 

[GRANDE] If these are going to be really meaningful negotiations, if in fact they are forced to have them under the larger umbrella, in the larger context at a Stockholm-type conference, then the real negotiations are going to go on bilaterally between the Americans and the Soviets, which I do not think we want. There will still be a certain amount of that, but the MBFR situation is much more manageable than the Stockholm one.

 

[COX] These are interesting comments in the light of your earlier comments about the way in which the MBFR negotiations developed structurally and procedurally. I suppose that one could say that in the situation that you described, bloc to bloc, as Roger put it, that there might be a role for, if not a third party, at least a facilitator. And I think the most charitable view of the idea of putting it into the CCSBNDE, is that the neutrals might play some facilitative role, rather than a mischievous role.

 

Would you attach any credibility to the notion that perhaps one of the limitations of the MBFR structure was the lack of a facilitator?

 

[GRANDE] A facilitator being a prodder, someone trying to get things going? I do not know who facilitated whom at Stockholm. I think that the West, including the Americans, found the neutral and non-allied countries very helpful in the Stockholm context.

 

[COX] The Soviets say so as well.

 

[GRANDE] So maybe. There’s something to what you say, but I do not think that Congress in its toughest sense could put up with Sweden and Switzerland negotiating American security. I really cannot see it, realistically. Some way could be devised to give them a say; they could have their say in this umbrella group, or by attaching them as observers or something to the real negotiations. I never heard that mentioned. It just occurred to me this minute, but I think that might be acceptable, and certainly keeping them fully informed and so on.

 

[HILL] What about the more fundamental problem of MBFR, which NATO so frequently mentions in communiques, this geographic disparity problem? I mean, can that be got over? It's a difficult one. I mean, the fact is that the Soviets are closer to the central front than the Americans are, and then you have this basic problem of reinforcement rates and times being different. That obviously has been addressed by NATO. Do you think that sort of issue can be handled?

 

[GRANDE] In the days when I was there, we tried to make a lot of this, on NATO’s side, and then the Soviets poo-poohed it, and gave their standard line as to why this is really not important. Interestingly enough, in the context of nuclear weapons and Euromissiles, the same thing exists in reverse as it were. The Soviets are threatened by Euromissiles, the Americans are not. So, there's some kind of a reverse connection there. How many American troops are here in Europe now? 200,000?

 

[HILL] Ground troops?

 

[GRANDE] I mean they are there. They are not across the Atlantic.

 

[HILL] I presume then, that there is a limit to how much you can ask.

 

[GRANDE] I think there is.

 

[HILL] What you want is some sort of balance, between the two sides.

 

What about these data and verification problems that have been made so much of at times; are they resolvable?

 

[GRANDE] I do not think you’ll ever get a complete agreement on data. Do you? Certainly you have to have a hell of a lot more trust and confidence and cooperation, and when you reach the stage when you have that, then you do not need an agreement on data.

 

[HILL] That may be.

 

I think Jonathan Dean in an article about two or three years ago suggested that, if there was political will there, then those things could be resolved, and verification also could be resolved. I mean, providing the Soviets are willing to accept some degree of on site inspection and so on.

 

I mean if the two sides want to, they can sort out these problems, but the more fundamental problems are the geographical ones, and so on. But he was suggesting that the basic problem three years ago was the attitude of the Soviet military, and particularly the Soviet need to keep control in Eastern Europe, and the general distaste of the Soviet military for any kind of reductions.

 

[GRANDE] I would not disagree with that, but maybe they were forced to the negotiating table. But I do not know, we could not judge that from the record.

 

[HILL] No.

 

[GRANDE] Well, you see the military did not participate in plenary meetings and so on. They said whatever they wanted bilaterally to their opposite numbers, but they did not have a direct contribution which is discernible.

 

[COX] Let's say that there were, not just disagreements about how to count the actual disparities, roughly of the kind of magnitude that had been discussed, but that there really were significant differences. Lets say from a military point of view. Was there a view that one could live with those disparities?

 

[GRANDE] Well, I suppose it depends on the type of agreement you are talking about. Certainly you do not need any agreement, or you can disregard the disparities for any initial token agreement. We did talk at great length about that, you know, saying, "We realize your cooks are in uniform, and ours aren’t," and all this sort of thing, but that was not too important. My short answer to your question is, yes, I think we could live with the disparities, but whether you could convince the Pentagon I do not know.

 

I am not one of those who agrees that there is at present a de facto parity between East and West in the conventional field. There are those, aren't there, who argue that things are balanced now in the conventional field, and say, "Leave it alone".

 

[COX] Did Ottawa express impatience, or want you to try and persuade the others to get on with it?

 

[GRANDE] Never.

 

[COX] No?

 

[HILL] That leads on to another question which I have concerning the exploratory talks. I asked your views on the policies of the United States and on the policies of the Europeans. I deliberately did not ask about Canadian perceptions so far. How would you assess the MBFR negotiations? What is the importance of the MBFR negotiations to Canada?

 

[GRANDE] As I mentioned earlier on this afternoon, we had just reduced our forces before these MBFR talks started, and in that new situation, I know those in External Affairs here, including myself, were anxious not to give NATO any reason to think that we had lost interest in the organization or in Western security. Canada was playing a role in Western security arrangements, therefore by the same token, in NATO, we were anxious to let all the Europeans know that we would go all out with whatever knowledge and expertise we had to promote the success of this MBFR conference. So we did co¬operate closely on occasion with the Germans, for instance, and sometimes with the British and others in preparing position papers, and preparing talking points and so on. This was helped by the team back in Ottawa who came to life occasionally and sent us reasoned pieces of paper.

 

I think in general Alliance terms, particularly as we had let the Alliance down a few years before when Trudeau had his big sweep up, we were anxious to play our full role in it. I was not so anxious to have our troops reduced. We had worked out roughly with the military what we would do if there were a 5% cut or whatever percent cut. What would that mean in Canadian terms? We had our positions clear, and we were willing to do whatever we had to do.

 

[HILL] So it was in effect partly to demonstrate an interest in the Alliance, taking an interest in what the Alliance was doing in this field.

 

[GRANDE] A political thing.

 

[HILL] It was also a means for Canada to contribute to general international peace and security.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, but I think that was true of all the NATO allies. Certainly it was the Canadian position.

 

[HILL] These negotiations were to some degree promoted initially by NATO, as an organization, with the allies behind it, of course. And as this was done through NATO, then presumably being in NATO was a very valuable way of contributing to this particular aspect of international affairs.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, that is right. If we were not in NATO, we could not have done it, and we were very anxious to continue to show that we thought being in NATO was a good thing, knowing there were forces in Ottawa who would like to take us out if they had a chance. As far as MBFR was concerned, the idea of having these two alliances closer together could contribute something, we were not quite sure how, but could contribute something to promoting detente.

 

[COX] I know it's a difficult question. Did you feel that your position was, well, if not compromised, made more awkward, by the reductions which had previously taken place in the Canadian Forces? And perhaps the other side of that: would you have felt that there was leverage, potentially, if the contribution had remained the same?

 

[GRANDE] In practical terms, I think it would not have made any difference. But how can you measure these things, because we have a few thousand less troops out of a very small number anyway in Europe? What you are asking is whether this gave me less importance, less leverage, whatever, as a Canadian diplomat, ambassador in Vienna at the conference, with my allies, with the other side, than if we had retained the same strength. I do not think it made any difference. I think a lot has to do with the personality you have got. I mean I could take a ribbing about our paltry force in Europe and I did.

 

[COX] So would you say that the ...

 

[GRANDE] Maybe in the NATO Council what you're saying was reflected more. I do not know, you should ask John Halstead, well, not Halstead, Menzies, Arthur Menzies.

 

[HILL] Ross Campbell of course was the one there when the cuts were actually made. I think one of the interesting things about his reaction to that was to redouble Canada's diplomatic efforts, that is to say keep the delegation going around the clock to make up for the military cuts. So maybe in some ways it even had the reverse effect. Who knows.

 

[COX] Would it be fair to say that your position would be that the pros and cons of an increased or reduced contribution should not be linked to diplomatic presence. In other words, one cannot make this kind of linkage. We cannot see any more influence, therefore there is no point in increasing the number of forces. We cannot see any influence, therefore there is no reason not to decrease them. Am I correct in thinking you would just simply not agree with that form of reasoning?

 

[GRANDE] I would not agree with the form of reasoning you just espoused? I would not agree with it, no. I do not agree, and that was not what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say was that by the fact that we had withdrawn whatever it was - how many men did we withdraw from Europe?

 

[HILL] About 2,500, I think.

 

[GRANDE] Withdrawing 2,500 men from Europe didn't make the slightest bit of difference to my power or lack of it in negotiations in Vienna. That is all I said. Certainly, if we did not have any forces in Europe, I think our political punch at NATO it would be reduced tremendously. This has never been tested, of course, but I believe that very strongly.

 

[COX] I guess I was just trying to get at this: people use this argument a great deal and try to find evidence for it but perhaps it's the wrong way of thinking.

 

[GRANDE] I think its the wrong way of looking at it. I do not think it should be used either way. I do not think it should be used as justification for having troops in Europe. I think the justification is there on its own if the allies in Europe want us to be there. We have a role, but the way it works in practical terms is dependent as much on the quality of the people there, and on having a sizeable delegation and a quality delegation, as it is on the military side. But you have to have military, I hasten to add, otherwise you have no raison d'etre. It's a military alliance essentially, even though we try to give it the economic dimension of Article II. It's still essentially a military alliance. We're discussing essentially security issues.

 

The political cooperation side of NATO, I think, is going to become increasingly important to Canada, if to no one else, because of the way political cooperation discussions are developing in the Common Market. I advocate that we should somehow or other try to get an observer status in them but we are excluded from them right now, which leaves us out in left field with the Americans, and that is not the way we want it.

 

[HILL] I think that was the point that Gordon Smith was quoted as making recently about the comparison between being at NATO now as compared with when he was there in the '60s. Now, much more is decided among the Europeans before it's put into the NATO Council, and this makes it much more difficult for Canada, if I quote him correctly.

 

[GRANDE] Well, it is. I know there are a lot of countries like the Dutch, the Belgians and so on, and the Danes, who are very conscious of the Canadian position. They do not want us excluded from the Common Market decisions but we are in many cases excluded from them, so that presents problems and makes it all the more important that the political discussions in the NATO Council be meaningful. We have a role to play in them, and that is the only place we have that role to play, unlike all the other countries.

 

[HILL] Just to finish off this bit, how would you assess the work of MBFR over time? You did touch on this already, talking about crisis management and so on, or crisis control, if you like. What about the educational process and things like that?

 

[GRANDE] I think that is very important in the longer term. We, I think as individuals, as well as governments, based on what we reported to them, became much more knowledgeable about the thinking of the Warsaw Pact, the individual members, the thing as a whole, individual member countries and the individual members of delegations. That is almost a sociological experience, certainly a psychological one. I think that has helped us in dealing with these countries. Certainly for all those who participated in the negotiations, if I am any example, and I do not think I was unique. It has enabled us to make a number of lasting friendships stretching across the so-called Iron Curtain, which last to this day. And I think if you multiply that by the number of people who participated in Vienna, you get some tremendous permutations and combinations which have a cumulative effect on this East-West question, by lowering tension, creating more understanding and so on. I think it's one of the intangibles, one of the good effects of these negotiations. If we had had some concrete agreements, we would not perhaps have had to stretch as far as to point to this sort of thing as an accomplishment; but it is, and it still is, to me, an amazing thing that these two mighty military alliances are meeting together daily, and have been for the last 13-14 years or more. I think it's a marvelous safety valve.

 

[HILL] One has the impression that the NATO system, the NATO military, have also learned a hell of lot about the military balance themselves, through the MBFR process in the last 15 years.

 

[GRANDE] Yes.

 

[HILL] And all the analyses that have gone into the thing. I think one always has the impression that the NATO military and Warsaw Pact, too, probably know at any given moment everything about their forces, but I think, in fact, they have to find out what is happening. There has been a lot of work in that respect.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, a lot of work since the conference began that was not done before.

 

[COX] Could you tell us a little bit about your comment that you had on several occasions made proposals for MBFR as becoming the basis for an international crisis control centre ...?

 

[GRANDE] This is in my present capacity as a journalist.

 

[COX] What kind of responses have you had?

 

[GRANDE] There is some genuine interest in this whole idea. As you know, this is one of the items mentioned in the first Geneva Summit, the American and Soviet Summit. They appointed people to meet together and they have met two or three times to discuss crisis control centres. I forget the exact words what they call them. And they have got somewhere, and they are continuing to discuss the concept. But no one has promoted the idea of making it in Vienna. I think the present agreement between them is they are establishing crisis control centres in Washington and Moscow. That is fine, but I think there should be one right where they are eyeball to eyeball. I mean there’s where you ...

 

[COX] I think they are mainly talking about nuclear confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union, strategic nuclear confrontations, whereas I get the sense that what you are talking about is a centre which would be able to consider local confrontations which were dangerous in terms what might happen one week hence.

 

[GRANDE] Yes, exactly.

 

[COX] It's a conventional crisis control centre if you like.

 

 

[GRANDE] Yes, I mean it could be as simple or as concrete as you wanted to make it. But I think that the expertise is constantly there, right in Vienna, and the friendship is there too. It is already a safety valve, but I think it could play a greater role in that area. I have not worked out the details but I think somebody who has looked into it more than I have is Jock Dean. He has written about it. Maybe you should follow it up. I suggest that you speak to him. I am interested in working more on it but once again there are those intangibles.

 

I do not suppose for a moment this is one of the purposes of the conference now convening, but that is ...

 

[COX] But it would not be the first time that it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

 

[HILL] Maybe MBFR will be fed into a larger, broader conference; but say that does not happen. I have the impression you feel it's been very a useful exercise up until now, and probably should be continued in some form or other unless it's somehow submerged into something else.

 

[GRANDE] I think it should be, and I think this is sound to have this as the Canadian view. I have often, for a long time, promoted the idea, and I think our minister took it up at one stage but did not get very far, of having periodic NATO-Warsaw Pact ministerial meetings, and the obvious basis for them is the MBFR Conference. Some of our bigger brothers did not like the idea.

 

Part VII - Southern Africa. 1976-79

 

[HILL] I would just like to go on, if you have the time, say for another 10 minutes, to look at the South African period, and this would be Part VIII of this interview. You were Ambassador to South Africa and High Commissioner to Botswana and Lesotho for 1976-79.

 

I think the element to look at here is the out-of-area question, always a big thing in NATO, in that I think probably the worst crises that NATO has ever been through have been usually had to do with the Middle East. One comes back to the Suez Crisis and to ‘73. Those were very difficult things for NATO. Southern Africa is a problem area, too, but not on quite the same dimensions, though difficult enough I think. Also the Namibia question. I believe you were Canada's representative on the Western Contact Group for a while, were you not? On the Namibia issue?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, I was the first, right at the beginning. I was the Canadian rep in situ on the spot. There were five countries who were members of the Security Council at the time, the five Western countries who had not only members on the Security Council but who had diplomatic missions in Pretoria who formed the Contact Group, and so it was Germany and Canada, the non-permanent members on the Council at the time, plus the Americans, the British and the French.

 

[HILL] Could you say something about the management of out-of- -area issues as far as NATO is concerned. I mean there have been periodic cries by various people that NATO extend its out-of-area of responsibility into the Southern Atlantic, but that never gets anywhere. But what is more to the point perhaps is that here you have different NATO countries associated in dealing with or facing up to the whole Southern African issue including the Namibia question. How much of a problem do you think that is for NATO, that whole area, and where do you see it going, and how can NATO best deal with it?

 

[GRANDE] I do not think this is tackled as a NATO problem or a NATO question. As far as I know, it was never even discussed in NATO. Maybe it was occasionally, but the origins were not at NATO. It was not conceived by NATO or in a NATO context. It was conceived in the United Nations context and set up as a Contact Group with a general desire to solve the Namibian problem at long last and to get it out of the way. If we could not solve the South African problem, you could at least solve this subsidiary problem up there, which was a hangover from the last war, and do some good, and maybe that in turn could have a good effect on South Africa and the South African government situation. That was the reasoning, and I am quite sure it was dreamed up in New York rather than in Brussels.

 

[HILL]    But I mean it was a Western group anyway?

 

[GRANDE] Oh, yes. It made it easier to do.

 

[HILL] It has an impact on NATO for that reason in that you have NATO members involved, at least.

 

[GRANDE] The French, for instance, were cooperating fully at that time, which they were not doing in Brussels. I think what you are asking, among other things, is did we as NATO members consider the threat to South Africa, the so-called Soviet threat to Southern Africa and South Africa, as a real one.

 

That's another question and one which we might come back to.

 

[HILL] I was thinking rather that it seemed to me there are different perspectives among different Western countries on some of these issues. Certainly the US has different views from others at various times. If the South African situation gets more difficult, then these differences in the West may become greater, and of course the Namibian question is not resolved yet either. That may become a greater source of difficulties. I mean, I suppose what I am asking is what do you think should be done to manage these things among the Western group? What should Canada try to do to help manage the responses to this problem in Southern Africa?

 

[GRANDE] Well, I do not know whether my views are very valuable in the context of what the Canadian government is doing. I, for one thing, am opposed to economic sanctions for many reasons. I do not think they work, and I think they hurt the people you are trying to help, and sometimes help the people you are trying to hurt and there are take-overs, desperate operations which are certainly not going to hurt rich South Africans, the whites. My plan, I have not got any answers for South Africa, is to indulge in a cooperative full scale maximum pressure operation with the South African government, to force them into an operation to develop a meaningful plan to turn, not to turn power over to the blacks, but to involve black people in power sharing. Its as simple as that. There are all kinds of possibilities for helping them get power. We in our wisdom, or lack of it, decided not to go that route. We came close to it, I thought, when we sent the Commonwealth Eminent Persons group to Pretoria and Capetown; but unfortunately, for reasons best known to them, the South African government either deliberately or otherwise sabotaged these operations by carrying out military attacks on Zimbabwe. I think this should be revived. I think there should be much more of this sort of thing. But if we want to do it, we cannot do it and at the same time engage in a maximum punitive operation against the country.

 

[HILL] Where do you see the whole South African scene going, unless something is done fairly soon? And what sort of threat does that pose to Western unity, the Western position?

 

[GRANDE] I think the maximum point of Western disunity has passed about a year ago before the Americans, at least the American Congress, passed the measures package against the wishes of the President. But I still have not given up on there being a bloodless change-over. A lot of blood has already been shed, but avoiding the blood bath which will surely take place if there is not political accommodation and solution is essential. There still can be one, in the next five years. There is not going to be a sudden breakdown of government and law and order in South Africa. Their armed forces are far too strong. Their infrastructure is strong. They are practically independent economically, they have stockpiles. They manufacture or produce by artificial means their own petroleum now and they do all kinds of amazing things, and they are also masters at obtaining what they do not make themselves, through kinds of channels which will always exist in this world of ours.

 

So they are not going to break down. They are not going to give up. They are not going to all migrate. The English South Africans might, but certainly not the Afrikaner whites. They will stay right there.

 

[HILL] So there is nothing really much that Canada can do through NATO, as such, to deal with the South Africans, because its more of a UN issue.

 

[GRANDE] No. I would not mix the two.

 

[COX] But given the juxtaposition of your assignments, were you conscious, not just of South Africa, but of the area, as one which affected NATO security?

 

[GRANDE] That is what I was starting to say earlier. That is the way the South African government for years and years has been putting it, claiming that they are vital to Western security. The Cape route is kind of a memorial and some importance as a naval landmark. But no, I think they have exaggerated. In this day of nuclear missiles winging their way over continents and oceans, I do not think it's important anymore from a strategic point of view. I suppose it would be important to NATO and to the West if South Africa were a Soviet Democratic Republic but I cannot see that happening. Who knows, maybe it will happen. If the radical African National Congress remains radical and becomes the government. I cannot even see that, but if they do become the government of South Africa and they retain their links with Moscow and so on, which are very strong, South Africa eventually would become a democratic republic. Then I suppose NATO would have something to worry about. But what are they still trying to protect? In this day of nuclear weapons, I do not think that it is strategically that important.

 

[COX] Were you there at the time of the famous Double Flash issue?

 

[GRANDE] When South Africa exploded a couple of nukes? Yes, but you did not hear much about it. Certainly they have the know how, whether they keep the thing fused or not. I do not know what they would use them for? What would they use nuclear weapons for? India has at least Pakistan to threaten. But South Africa, it cannot use them up in the Caprivi Strip.

 

[COX] But from your vantage point there, of the Double Flash, I am sure you know the scientific panel in the United States eventually decided there was not a nuclear explosion but a kind of freak. But since then people have gone back to thinking there was a nuclear explosion. Given what you have just said, if it were a nuclear explosion, who is making the explosives?

 

[GRANDE] There is very close cooperation at all times between Israel and South Africa to this very day despite recent announcements that Israel is about to cut off its supplying of armaments and so on. The relationship is a very close one, and up until now considered worthwhile both ways to continue. I just do not know.

 

[HILL] Well, I think at this point we will close off.

 

[COX]     Do we have just one minute?

 

[HILL]    Okay.

 

[COX] I wanted to ask you, was it jarring to go from those years of detailed pursuit of conventional force reductions to the direct problem of racism?

 

[GRANDE] Yes, I suppose jarring is a good way to put it. I would not have gone to South Africa if I had my own choice at any time. But having gone to South Africa, I do not regret having been sent there. I think I profited and knew people better. And, in a sense, the Namibian operation, which took up over 50% of our time at one stage, sort of threw me back I suppose into the negotiating mold, which I had been in for the previous four years in Vienna.

 

[COX] Did they consult with you about MBFR when you had gone to South Africa?

 

[GRANDE] The South Africans?

 

[COX] No, Ottawa.   

 

[GRANDE] No, typical I think. You are gone and forgotten.

 

[COX] Isn't this extraordinary, though, you must have been the principal source of knowledge and then ...

 

[GRANDE] There were others . . .

 

[HILL] Well, I think we will close off at this point, Ambassador Grande. Thank you very much indeed for coming and joining in this exercise.

 

[GRANDE] It's been a pleasure.