Robert Cameron

ROBERT CAMERON

* Interviewers: Hill, Pawelek

 

[HILL]* Good morning. Our guest today is Ambassador Robert Cameron, former Assistant Under-Secretary of State, and Canada's representative to Poland and a number of other East European countries. Ambassador Cameron, we are very pleased that you can be with us this morning and that you have agreed to participate in this project.

 

[CAMERON] For my part I am very glad to participate. I have always been a strong supporter of NATO and I feel that it still has a very valuable role to play in terms of Canadian foreign policy.

 

[HILL] Ambassador Cameron, as you know, what we are engaged in at the present is an oral history of Canadian Policy in NATO. We are examining the development of Canadian foreign policy since 1945, and trying to obtain some insights into Canadian approaches to international peace and security, especially in the field of East-West relations. We are focussing on NATO and on NATO-related issues.

 

[CAMERON] I understand.

 

[HILL] Ambassador Cameron, just to make some further comments about the main thrust of this project, it is of course aimed at examining the role of NATO in Canadian foreign policy and in Canada’s efforts to pursue its foreign policy goal of international peace and security. So we will be very interested in your views on issues which arose when you were working directly on NATO affairs, for example when you were head of the NATO and North American Division of the Department of External Affairs in 1969. But we are also keen to have your views on developments in areas which might be described as NATO-related. By this I mean when you were working on questions dealing with relations with Eastern Europe, for example, during the 1970's when you held a series of ambassadorial posts there. Ambassador Cameron, the way we would like to approach these two interviews is to examine your career in a series of phases. Part I will deal with the early phase up to 1947, Part II will briefly consider your early service with the Department of External Affairs from 1947-1958, Part III will deal with the years from 1958-1968 when you were serving in Ottawa, Washington and Bonn. Part IV will consider your work in the years from 1969-1974 when you were firstly head of the North American Division of the Department, and then Director General of the Bureau of Defence and Arms Control Affairs; and I believe in that same position you were the External Affairs Representative on the Permanent Joint Board of Defence.

 

[CAMERON] On two occasions in fact, two separate occasions.

 

[HILL] Part V will deal with the years when you served as Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria which was in 1974-1977. In Part VI we will deal with the years from 1978-1980 when you were Ambassador to Poland and the German Democratic Republic and in Part VII we will examine your service during the years 1981-1983 when you were Assistant Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for the Bureau of International Security Policy and Arms Control Affairs. Of course I am aware of one or two other aspects of your career: for example, when you were Diplomat in Residence at the University of British Columbia from 1977-1978 and I think afterwards you had a similar posting to the University of Toronto. We will try to work some reflections from those periods into the discussion as we work through the different issues in a more or less chronological order.

 

[CAMERON] That is fine.

 

Part I - Early Years, to 1947

 

[HILL] Ambassador Cameron, the purpose of this particular section is to give some idea of your own background.

 

[CAMERON] I studied law at the University of Toronto, at the School of Law which was under the direction of Professor W.P.M. Kennedy who was a noted authority on constitutional law. During the summers, to assist with the cost which my widowed mother could ill afford, I worked at a variety of jobs, deck hand on a lake boat, bell boy at a hotel, etc.. Like many of my colleagues at the time, I received my law degree on Active Service. Having served in the Officers Training Corps, I was eligible to compete for a commission as a junior officer in Her Majesty’s Canadian Forces. I trained at Gordon Head, B.C. and from there I went to a number of other training camps, and for a number of reasons I ended up probably training in more branches of the Canadian Armed Forces than any other officer at the time. Eventually I ended up in the infantry and when I went overseas, I trained again at a battle drill school in Southern England, and I arrived on the continent just at the end of the war, and was posted to a regiment called the Essex Scottish which had had a very bad time at Dieppe, lost most of their men. I was with the Essex Scottish in Germany for about four months for the most part looking after surrendered German troops. Faced with the prospect of staying longer in Germany with the army of occupation, I chose the option of volunteering to join the Canadian troops being sent to fight the Japanese. We were sent back to Canada, had all our inoculations to fight in the jungle, including malaria shots and everything, and then something happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the war was over. I went back to University and I decided that I would not go into law. Having been abroad and having travelled a lot, I decided that law, sitting in one place in Toronto in the lawyer's office, was not my cup of tea, so enrolled as a M.A. student in Political Economy, under Professor Dawson. He was an exceptionally stimulating professor and I enjoyed very much working under his guidance as an instructor with one of his graduate seminars. I continued these studies until the early spring of 1947, when having passed the External Affairs entrance examination, I accepted their offer of employment at the huge sum of $2,700 per annum!

 

Part II - 1947-58

 

[HILL] So that really leads us then to Part II, which is your early career in the Department. You joined the Department in 1947 and you served first in Ottawa like everybody else, I suppose, who joins the Department; and then you were in Havana from 1948 to 1950.

 

[CAMERON] There is something in there that is not mentioned in my CV and that is that my first appointment in the Department, having been there, I guess, a total of six months or maybe a year, I was sent to New York to the United Nations to be Secretary, which is a demanding job, of the Canadian delegation to the Economic and Social Council. My knowledge of the subject matter was not very great, I can assure you, but it was an introduction to the conference. I was there for three months in the summer and in those days there were no facilities like we have now. The meetings were outside the city at Lake Success, in a factory that was built during the war, with air-conditioning which was designed to cool the building when they had machines going. To survive, all the women translators wore fur coats. Paul Martin was the Minister of Health and Welfare and Head of the Delegation; George Davidson, his Deputy, was number two, and Arnold Smith was number three. We had travelled all the way out to Lake Success every day in a taxi and then sat all day in this freezing temperature. At night we went back into New York and sweltered in the hotel where there was no air conditioning. July and August, I guess it was nearly two and one-half months. That in effect was my introduction to an international conference.

 

[HILL] That was after you joined the Department?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, I had been in only four months. In those days you were trained on the job; you were given a desk and a pile of things to do all of which required action and you had to get busy. Or if you went to a conference, you knew nothing about the background at all, virtually nothing. You had to read it up when you were there and then you had to write a report.

 

[HILL] Well, you went from there to Havana?

 

[CAMERON] I learned about Havana from a guy called Mr. Mike Pearson who in addition to being our Under-Secretary played first base on our departmental soft ball team. I was one of the pitchers. I was just married and luckily had found a nice little apartment in Sandy Hill. I was going to the East Block one morning and Mr. Pearson was on the streetcar with me. In the course of the conversation, he said "I hear you are going to Cuba". I coughed a few times and said "No sir, I really have not heard anything about that", and he said "There must be some mistake, you know there have been so many postings lately that I must be mixed up". He was the Under-secretary. And when I got off the streetcar I immediately went to my boss Gerry Riddell and I told him about my conversation with Mr. Pearson and he said "Yes, Bob, I am sorry to tell you that that is true. We did not like to tell you because, you know, there have been so many cases of postings been announced then, at the last minute they had to change it". "So", he said, "but if you want to confirm it you can phone up the head of Personnel." So I phoned up old Terry McDermitt, who was covered with embarrassment but confirmed the decision which meant giving up our apartment and leaving for Cuba in about six weeks. That is just the way things worked in those days.

 

[HILL] It was a much smaller Department.

 

[CAMERON] It was a smaller Department and everybody knew each other I suppose, but on the other hand Administration was not its strong point and it never has been.

 

[CAMERON] Havana in those days was, how shall I say, a very agreeable first post. It was like very many Latin American countries, there are the haves and the have-nots, and the haves were the minority and the have-nots were the majority. But we never had the feeling that the have-nots were suffering very greatly because of the nature of the climate, and the very fertile nature of the country. It was a country which was then going through, the second so-called democratic regime of President Prio Socarras, who was the second elected President after the World War II. During World War II the man in charge was Fulgencio Batista, who was the real authoritarian strong man in traditional Latin American fashion. During the time we were there it was Prio. We had good relations with the Cubans. It was a period, I would not call it of turmoil in the political sense, but there was a certain amount of unrest among the workers, particularly the sugar workers. There was a Communist party, not a very strong one. Most of our problems were in a sense reporting general conditions in the country, bilateral relations. There was a large contingent of Canadians in Havana which was an important centre in the Caribbean for Canadian banks, insurance companies and businesses. Canadians had a very good reputation. The Cubans did not trust their own government and they did not like to put their money with the Americans so they put their money in Canadian banks and insurance companies which did very well. There was a big Canadian colony there, bigger than the British. There also was a very large American contingent but Canadians were very well regarded. And of course the Canadian Trade Commission had been there long before we had opened the Legation. There had been trade relations with Cuba going way back before the Department of External Affairs was established. As a first post, Havana was very agreeable. It was interesting, and involved a new language. At first we used to speak what we called "Spench", which was, Quebecois French with a Spanish ending. And the Cubans used to say, "muy bien". Talk about language training, one week in Havana was worth three months in some language school. You really had to communicate in Spanish, you could not use English. And you had to read the papers; there was no translation. We had a translator but it was a hopeless kind of translation as he did not know how to write English.

 

[HILL] It had nothing to do with East-West relations at that time?

 

[CAMERON] It was more bilateral, and in terms of the work, there was quite a bit of consular stuff. For example, some of the consular work involved looking after seamen, visiting them in jail, etc.. There was a fair amount of that. But you had to do, as you did in those days, practically everything. If the officer from Trade and Commerce was away we had to do the trade work, or if I was away he would do our work.

 

[HILL] From there you came back to Ottawa and you went into the European and Economic Divisions. Was any of that involved with work with NATO?

 

[CAMERON] Yes. The most interesting period at that time involved the question of German entry into NATO. I remember John Halstead was my equivalent in the NATO Division, and I was on the German desk, of all things, having just come from Cuba. I remember, we had to work on the resolution presented to parliament where there was a debate on German entry into NATO. We also had to prepare reports on the situation for Parliament, for committees and for the Minister's statements; there was a long process which led up to the eventual resolution endorsing the admission of Germany to NATO. Each country, including Canada, had to go through this process. There was quite a debate in the House on the issue. I was involved on the European side, but a lot of the work was done by the people in the NATO Division. We had to prepare a lot of memoranda on the German attitudes and look after all the telegrams and the documents that came in from our Embassy in Bonn.

 

[HILL] Well, that is a sort of very exciting period in …

 

[CAMERON] It was very, very interesting. For example, there was the related, politically sensitive question of German rearmament. I did have a little bit of knowledge of the background as I had been in Germany for four months at the end of the war and I'd read a good deal about those issues. It was a very active period, with long, long hours devoted among other things to the preparation of reports for Parliament and its committees. They had more debates

on foreign policy in those days than they do now in the House.

 

[HILL] That was the whole period of the French Assembly rejecting the European Defence Community, the negotiation of the London and Paris agreements, etc…

 

It is interesting that you mention the parliamentary aspect of this, because my impression is that there was very little dissension in Parliament about the modification of the treaties that brought Germany in. Isn't that so?

[CAMERON] Well, I think that's probably true. My recollection is not very clear, but I think that probably there was little dissension, but there was a lot of looking at it from a bureaucratic point of view and briefing the Minister. But I do not recall, having not always gone regularly to the House, how much opposition there was. I think a lot of the Members probably did not understand the issue. The document before the House was very complex and to study it carefully took a lot of time. I do not think the average Member probably had the time, and probably few of them were aware of all its implications.

 

[HILL] It was not very long after the war really, so the average Canadian, many of them....

 

[CAMERON] The CCF, as I recall, was very strongly opposed to the rearmament of Germany; but I just do not remember how much full discussion there was. We prepared a lot of material for the debate which, I think, lasted at least a day.

 

[HILL] Would you say that NATO served the interests of Canadian foreign policy well in that period, I mean as regards bringing Germany in and so on?

 

[CAMERON] To the extent that Canadian foreign policy is served by the maintenance of international stability and especially East-West stability, I think that this action was very much required at the time. Certainly the perception on this side of the Atlantic, and I think in Europe, was that the Soviet Union had not done anything in the way of reducing its huge forces which had been mobilized during the war, had done nothing to alleviate any concern about their expansionist aims; and the events of 1948 in Czechoslovakia served to reinforce these fears. I think if you look at it in retrospect, I do not think there was really any other option open to the allies. I think that the reconstruction of Germany was a remarkable event if you compare it with what happened to Germany after World War I. To my mind, it was a sign of real statesmanship that the United States was prepared to take the lead in allowing the Germans to build up their economy, and not to impose upon them the kind of sanctions that were imposed after the First World War. And the German attempt to introduce democracy, I mean in West Germany, has been successful. I do not think that would have been possible had they not been required to have their own forces. I think that the Germans were a bit ambivalent about this; I was in Bonn later and I do not think - certainly the young people were not happy about it. Your impression is probably the same Roger, they were not happy about being in the forces, you know, it is not something they look forward to at all. It was a real pain. And there is always the worry in the back of many people's minds that they might sometimes become aggressive again. My own view was that it was a positive development. There were a lot of worries at the time, I grant you that.

 

[HILL] But you do not think there was any prospect of pushing, for German reunification, as a neutralized country?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, there were, and there were a number of proposals. I remember in 1955 there was a conference in Geneva, a couple of conferences in Geneva, for German reunification on the basis of free elections and this became almost a subject that got kind of boring, because they put it forward so many times. But the Communist system does not work on the basis of free elections, and there was no way that the Soviets were going to accept a freely elected government in Germany. The experience in Poland showed that their idea of freedom, and free elections, was quite different from ours. And there were a number of proposals; I can remember preparing various proposals. Canada was not shy about putting forward proposals about Berlin and a unified Germany; there were all kinds of ideas floating around.

 

[HILL] And they were put forward inside NATO?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, inside. I am getting ahead of myself a bit but there were some put forward later on in the 50’s, and I think if you talked to another person that was involved in this, Professor Peyton Lyon at Carleton University, he was doing the German desk later when I was on the NATO side. He was very active in many of these areas and there were all kinds of ideas floating around, some of them having Germany as a sort of a neutral along the lines of Austria. It would be guaranteed by the four powers, the big boys, and there would be an elected government on the basis of free elections. It seemed clear that the Soviets would never go for that but at one point they actually came very close.

 

[HILL] It was not from want of trying, then?

 

[CAMERON] No, no.

 

[HILL] It was not that the West approached this thing in a fossilized way?

 

[CAMERON] No, that was not my impression. No I think there were a lot of people that probably were kind of cynical about the proposition of a unified Germany on the basis of free elections. The problem is that the kind of system they have in Eastern Europe just does not allow for any dissent. To introduce plurality into such a system just would not work.

 

[HILL] It is interesting. Thinking back on that period, I remember the night that word came through that the French Assembly had rejected the European Defence Community. It was a big event.

 

[CAMERON] And those French fears are still alive today you know, I think.

 

[HILL] About the whole question of...?

 

[CAMERON] Well, you have heard the old French joke about Germany. They loved the Germans so much they would like to continue to have two Germanies. And it is true. Now that may be disappearing as the young French people meet the young Germans, they travel more, and still it is way down deep inside, it is part of the French psyche, how they feel.

 

[HILL] A lot of things seemed to happen in that 1945-55 period, but nonetheless already by 1955 one was into a different kind of a world, somehow, from the immediate post-war period. To many people in Canada, this was a kind of golden age of Canadian foreign policy and security policy. Canada was a strong member of NATO and pursued some very effective diplomacy, I think. Then in 1956 there was the Suez crisis, and Lester Pearson inventing peace-keeping. One keeps coming across this phrase: The “Golden Age of Canadian Diplomacy." How would you see it? Would you see it in those terms?

 

[CAMERON] Well, I would put it somewhat differently. I think to me it was a time when Canada played a very active role commensurate with our position as one of the larger, one of the bigger, participants in World War II. I mean I think it flowed from the fact that we had a very large part in it, bigger than we ever had, after World War I. We had a big part to play in things, a fairly big part for a smaller country, in the post-war settlement; and combined with that we had a number of people, Escott Reid, Lester Pearson, and Gerry Riddell was another one that you do not even hear about anymore because he died prematurely from overwork, and St. Laurent, before this period you are talking about, who were very active. And Canada played a big role in bringing NATO into existence, a big role, and this is what makes me so mad when I hear someone like Gwynne Dyer talking about how Canada was dragged in by the Americans. The Americans were the ones who did not want to get involved in a lot of this. Anyway, no I think that there was a combination of circumstances plus a very active and able group of people who were dedicated and, not only dedicated but very competent at negotiation, at reporting a whole series of things. We were able to play at that time a much greater role than the size of our country would normally warrant. Whether you call it the Golden Age of Diplomacy, I do not know, but I think it began right at the end of the War with the people like George Ignatieff and Escott Reid and Lester Pearson. I remember Norman Robertson was another unusual person, very unusual; he had a remarkable mind. He could apply the experience on GATT, the rules of GATT, to the disarmament negotiations—this kind of thing. Unbelievable, and he would come up with these ideas which were incredible. But he had heavy responsibilities as Under-Secretary with enormous piles of things to deal with, piled up in baskets on his desk. But he also had, we found out later, a technique for dealing with problems when he could not make up his mind. In those days they had those swivel chairs with a little pad on the seat. The story I recall about him was that he would stack the papers relating to those problems under the pad on his seat. Later, when he moved out of his office in the East Block, they found a pile of memoranda, a thick wad of really complicated problems whose importance appeared to have diminished with the passage of time. Another key player was our former Ambassador in Washington, Arnold Heeney, who was there when I was posted to that city. All these were exceptional people and very influential. At that time there was an unusually strong group of civil servants who have written about by Professor Granatstein in his book “The Mandarins." I do not think he coloured his account of what was going on.

 

[HILL] Perhaps one of the most important things that Canada did in this period was to help to keep the United States involved with the world, and not go back to isolation as in the previous periods. It is not just the bilateral relationship between Canada and US that is important.

 

[CAMERON] No, I agree.

 

[CAMERON] The role we played in Washington in that period was much greater than most people are aware of, I think, because of the influence of individuals. Of course, it was a smaller world in those days.

 

[HILL] The influence that Canada exerted on the United States at that time was not so much related to the bilateral relationship?

 

 [CAMERON] No.

 

[HILL] It was more in world affairs.

 

[CAMERON] That is right, and I think that was because it was reinforced by the fact that we were more of a player on the global scene than we are now in the security sense. Sure we play a lot of roles in other things, but proportionately we had a greater role to play then by virtue of our war time operations.

 

[HILL] One point that John Holmes brought out, which I had never really been aware of, is the fact that on the economic side, particularly in the immediate post-war period, it was Canada that helped maintain the British economy with a major loan. That has been almost forgotten these days.

 

[CAMERON] That is coming out in the documents which they are going through right now.

 

[HILL] It was Canada's help that was critical. Britain was in state of near-bankruptcy.

 

[CAMERON] The British economy was in great difficulty, that is right. There was a lot of help given to Britain then.

 

[HILL]    So, that sort of thing meant that Canada had a major role in international affairs.

 

[CAMERON] On these kinds of issues, which are not issues that touched the headlines often, but have a lot of influence with people in charge, in positions of authority.

 

[HILL] Do you have any further comments on that period?

 

[CAMERON] I remember Robert Ford. He was the another key player. He played a very key role in those days.

 

[HILL] But in terms of Canada's relations with NATO in that period, are there any other comments?

 

[CAMERON] Well, I cannot think of anything else. I guess the event that comes to mind so sharply is the admission of Germany to NATO, and the problems involved in the German re-armament. The question of Berlin was the key question and still is, and the attitude of the allies to Germany, the admission of Germany to NATO. Those problems preoccupied us - almost every day - and the Canadian attitude towards them. There was a certain amount of opposition, and I think it was mostly in the CCF. But there were also SPD people in the German parliament, who in those days were somewhat ambivalent about German re-armament. But I think Adenauer did command substantial support even outside his own party and was able to get the proposition through, and that was by no means a simple matter, getting it through the Bundestag.

 

We also had in those days something that we do not have now. We used to have a daily briefing group preparing intelligence for the Chiefs of Staff in the Department of National Defence. I was the External Affairs guy on the group. There were three people from the Services, a fellow from the Joint Intelligence Board (JIB), and myself from External; we would do a short report every day on the main issues of interest. We would get into the greatest arguments with the guys in DND and they of course would have their own perspective about the world and what was happening in the world. So we got what you might call a world view from an intelligence standpoint in that job. It was interesting and I did that for about a year and one-half before I joined the European Division and became immersed in German problems.

 

[HILL] When you were doing intelligence work, did I understand you to say that US estimates were generally much exaggerated, or some of them were?

 

[CAMERON] Well, I think a lot of them were, particularly those dealing with China. The Americans used to argue that Red China was part of the Communist bloc. Like the British empire in the old days, the bloc was coloured in red and covered most of the world. We argued that China could not be regarded in those simplistic terms. China had its own aims, although clearly there was a close association with the Soviets. But they had basic problems which were a source of division. In hindsight, our position really was borne out by events. I guess we went to Washington a couple of times and used to have what they called joint estimates. We used to have long arguments on that issue. We never got agreement. And of course I think they did not want to get agreement. The Americans regarded Communist China as being one of the bad boys like Nicaragua today. I mean, they have blinkers on and they do not want to look at them; there are no greys often, it is black or white. Reagan is a good example of that. It is nothing new with the Americans.

 

[HILL] Well, I know that when we did the parliamentary report on security and disarmament, one of the crucial issues there was to put in two different sets of estimates of the world military situation, because you could not simply get agreement in the committee on one set.

 

[CAMERON] That is right, we had two different estimates.

 

[HILL] And the information you take is basic, it tends to govern a lot of the rest of your thinking.

 

[CAMERON] And then later we had the same kind of problem on the bomber gap. You remember that.

 

[HILL] Yes, that is right.

 

[CAMERON] So it is not a new phenomenon. I just thought that would be relevant.

 

[HILL] I would just like to finish up with the period when, from 1955 to 1958, you were in Stockholm. That was a period when East - West relations were undergoing a great deal of change, in the sense that de-Stalinization was going further and further ahead; it had started in 1953. Then of course there were the Polish troubles, which brought Gomulka to power, and then the Hungarian crisis. And there was a continuing problem with Germany and Berlin I think, plus then there was the Suez Crisis. That of course was all somewhat to the south of where you were in Stockholm. But what was the state of the security situation in Scandinavia while you were there. Were the Scandinavians involved in thinking about NATO at that time?

 

[CAMERON] Not very much. Well, first of all, most Scandinavians were isolationists during World War I. Norway was not involved, they were neutral, the Swedes were out. The Swedes were not involved in the last war; the Norwegians were directly involved, but the Swedes were involved to the extent that they looked after their own interests, you know. The feeling between the Norwegians and the Swedes when we were there was very strong. Norway would not forgive the Swedes for allowing the Germans to go through their country and up into the North. There was a lot of antipathy between the two; at least that was my impression in those days and I think it still exists to this day. The feeling persists that Norwegians fought during the war and the Swedes made money and allowed the Germans to go through their country into Norway, and they sold iron ore to feed Hitler's war machines. The Swedish factories prospered. My impression of Sweden is that Sweden looks on itself and is regarded by a lot of the Norwegians in the same way as the United States is regarded by people in this part of the world. They are regarded as the wealthiest, the most prosperous, and so on. Although Stockholm is not exactly the centre of the world, the Swedes tend to look on it as such. In a way, Scandinavia is kind of a world apart. And the Swedes like to run things; and they tend to look on Finland as their protectorate. The Swedes are very proud of their history. Apparently the word "Russia" came from the Swedish word "Rus". Back in the late middle ages, the Swedes conquered most of the territory which is now the Russian Republic of the USSR. The Swedish museums are full of things that they brought back from that part of the world. So, they sort of look on themselves as the big guys in Scandinavia. As for the Soviets, they do not like them. They still look upon them as their traditional enemy. Sweden has its own little defence force which is quite remarkable for the size of the country. The whole population is about 7 million. They have prosperous and efficient industries. They build their own airplanes, and in addition to Volvos they are now selling cars in Canada that are built by the Swedish aircraft company, "SAAB". They are a remarkable people but I never got the impression that Sweden was a world player in the sense of being involved in a lot of these East - West issues. They were involved in the UN. Their big player was the Secretary General of the United Nations. That kind of role when Hammarskjold was around in those days, was their focus. The UN was their focus. The role that they played in the humanitarian side, the role that they played through Hammarskjold was their international focus. They were interested in, but marginally involved in, the other East-West issues. What they really liked to talk to you about was what they were doing on the UN Commission in Korea. We were on the Commission in Korea at that time so they were interested in talking about that. They would be interested, they would tell you a bit about their problems with the Soviets, you know they did not have submarines in those days, but they had problems of that kind. They had the perennial question of the Swedish diplomat that disappeared during the war - Wallenberg. They had a number of issues like that. They had a few bilateral questions with Canada that were quite important.

 

There were a lot of Swedish investments in Canada, a lot of money in shipping and investments in pulp and paper on the West coast; that whole bilateral relationship has grown enormously since those days. There are a number of areas where we have a very considerable common interest with Sweden.

 

[HILL] So that was the focus of your work, you were not really working on NATO-related issues.

 

[CAMERON] No, not really, no. Although it was useful for me to have this background. We had as our Minister, Jean Chapdelaine, you may have known him.

 

[HILL] No.

 

[CAMERON] This was his first position as Head of Mission. His predecessor was a man called Matthews, and he left just after we arrived and I was in charge for about three or four months, and then Chapdelaine took over. He was also accredited to Finland. And the other thing about the Swedes is that they are very pre-occupied with what the Soviets do vis-a-vis Finland. Finland is part, they considered it as almost like a protectorate, and the Finns get very annoyed with this paternalistic attitude of the Swedes. Finland is a bilingual country and the traditional ruling classes in Finland are Swedes, who are a minority.

 

[HILL] Still about 10 per cent of the population.

 

[CAMERON] They used to compare it to Montreal with the French Canadians and the English, there is a similarity. But, no, I would not say that East-West relations loomed very large. We were fairly busy. Because the Minister would tootle off to Finland, I would be in charge and have to run everything, including the information program. There was one other officer who was a Commercial Secretary and I would do his work when he was away and he would do my work when I was on holidays. You had a very full platter of stuff to do, apart from being Charge; and the Swedes, as I say, were very good to deal with in the sense that when you went down they would ask you "What do you want to talk about?”. And they would give you more than what you wanted to know, more than you had time to write down. You did not send telegrams in those days. You had to write it all down, you know, and complete it with the formal ending: "I have the honour to be. Sir, your obedient servant."

 

I do not know if that is very relevant, but it is kind of another world in Scandinavia. They are northern people, they have a number of problems similar to Canada, but they are very, in a sense, distant; related to us politically mostly through the UN.

 

Part III - Ottawa, Washington and Bonn, 1958-68

 

[HILL] Ambassador Cameron, in 1958 you joined the Defence Liaison Division in Ottawa and then you went to the Embassy in Washington as Counsellor for Political Affairs for a further four year period. This was a very important period in Canadian- American defence relations and also in Alliance relations, for example in respect of the problem of the control of nuclear weapons. I wonder if you could tell us something about the development of Canadian-American defence relations in this period, especially relating to NORAD and also to the question of equipping the Canadian Armed Forces with nuclear weapons. I am wondering what kind of impact did Canada’s policies on the nuclear weapons issue have on its standing and influence in NATO for example. This is in the period after 1958; I think it was to about 1962.

 

[CAMERON] Would you like me to mention the Canada-USA side first.

 

[HILL] Yes, if you would like to. This period after 1958 was the period that NORAD was established, wasn't it?

 

[CAMERON] Yes. I am just trying to get the events in sequence. These are as they come to my mind but they may not be accurate in terms of the precise dates. I can mention a bit about the relationship between the Department of Defence and the Department of External Affairs, which I think was very germane to this whole business because, there was in 1958 as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff a man called General Charles Foulkes, who was a very, very shall we say, intelligent, influential, unusual member of the Services, very conservative in his outlook, as many members of the Forces tend to be, but also very much, as we say ’he played his cards close to his chest'. I think without doing him an injustice my recollection is that he tended to give Ministers what he thought Ministers should have, and thought that the members of the Forces, who were conscious of the security aspects, security in the sense of military aspects of various weapon systems, they should deal with that and the Ministers would have less interest in some of the different types of equipment. The actual decision on NORAD, I think, was taken just before I joined the Division. The officer who was dealing with this, if I remember, was Jim McCardle. I did the NATO side, that is the things that were going on in NATO, and I was only indirectly involved at that particular period in the arrangements concerned with North American defence. So, there was a whole series of things, there was the question of the NORAD Agreement, the question of the over-flights by SAC aircraft, the Bases Agreement, Argentia, all these issues where I think your best source would be Jim McCardle. On the NATO side, I think the issue that stands out in my mind was the equipment of the air division with the CF 104s, which was in 1959. There was very little said in any of the papers we got from National Defence about the role the aircraft would have or the kind of weapons it would use. I remember doing a memorandum for the Minister in which I brought out the fact that the aircraft was expected to have a nuclear- strike role which would have a number of important implications. While we were not involved in the Cabinet meeting I had the impression that the equipment issue was not considered very carefully or that the Ministers were aware that the aircraft would be carrying nuclear weapons. My recollection is that this aspect of the decision did not appear to weigh heavily in the minds of the people who had to make the decision and it was not widely advertised by DND. It was typical of the way the government operated in those days. The Department of National Defence ran their shop, they tended to keep all these things to themselves. They would say: "We are the airmen, and we know best what is required." They did not provide any more information than they thought was necessary without actually hiding it.

 

[HILL] When the Diefenbaker government came in, I think it was initially in 1957, and then in 1958, the government was more or less presented with the NORAD Agreement and asked to sign on the dotted line, which it more or less did. And it relates a bit to the CF 104 as well, and to the Honest John in Europe. What happened then, as far as I understand it, what happened is that the government at that time took these decisions which were presented to it by DND. It did not go through a careful analysis, and what Canada wound up with was a NORAD Agreement which was not related to NATO, or at least it was in a vague sort of way but certainly without the kind of consultative procedures there are in NATO. Plus, then, Canada acquired the CF-104 with the nuclear role and also the Honest John but in fact without nuclear warheads. The Avro Arrow was scrapped in this time, and Canada got the Bomarc, but it did not acquire the warheads.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, there were separate agreements necessary for the warheads.

 

[HILL] Some people argue that this was just another case of the government's indecision.

 

[CAMERON] I know that there are lot of people who say NORAD should be closer to NATO and that consultations should be more in tune with the NATO side. I am aware of that, but I think you also have to accept the fact there has been too much written into the NORAD Agreement. The NORAD Agreement essentially was an attempt to integrate the North American air defence forces as a practical arrangement. The political side of it was not, in those days certainly, ever given a great deal of prominence or importance. There was at that time, the Canada-US Defence Committee which involved the Minister of Defence, the Minister of External Affairs and their counterparts in the United States. The Minister of Defence Production was also included because the defence production was an important part of our bilateral relationship. On the US side I think that was handled by the Secretary of Defense; because they did not have a Cabinet Minister responsible for defense production. Now this committee gradually, with the lack of, shall we say, rapport between the Diefenbaker crowd and the people in Washington, fell into disuse. But for a while, there were meetings held in this committee and I think that the tendency was to look on that—this is my recollection, it may be faulty—but I think there was a tendency to look on that as a kind of political consultative relationship, and NORAD was not. It was considered to be more of an integration of the air forces for the air defence of North America, which made sense, given the perception that the Soviet Union was developing a considerable bomber force which would have the capacity to attack SAC bases and other strategic points in North America, and that consequently, in fairness to the people who were there at the time, it seemed to me there was not much thought given to the need for consultation in NORAD. But I think my own perception is, that the difficulties arose largely out of the separate worlds in which National Defence and External lived and because of the dissimilar attitudes of the officials and ministers involved. As I recall there was not much rapport or consultation between the departments. My experience in Washington was similar; the Pentagon was suspicious of the State Department- -"a bunch of cookie pushers, those diplomats, what do they know about these problems. We are the guys who are on the front line." A little bit of that existed and still does today. Our defence people and senior officers are only beginning now to talk about arms control. The Americans are a long way ahead of us in this regard. A similar situation existed in the late fifties in Canada. On the ministerial side in DND you had George Pearkes who was a World War I hero who won the Victoria Cross. He was a very good soldier. He was the Minister of Defence and our Minister was Howard Green, I believe.

 

[HILL] It was Sidney Smith originally.

 

[CAMERON] Well, I can tell you something about Sidney. My recollection of Sidney Smith goes back to my time when I was in DLI division. The late Bruce Keith and I used to have to prepare papers for him because he was appearing before the House of Commons Committee on External Affairs which was discussing Berlin and Germany. Sidney Smith had been President of the University of Toronto and a prominent Rotarian and a very good speaker. We prepared for him a briefing paper which attempted to explain the Four-Power Agreements on Germany and Berlin. Have you ever read those documents?

 

[HILL] No.

 

[CAMERON] Well, the GATT Agreement is probably easy to comprehend compared to those very complex agreements. In any event, he went to the Committee in the House of Commons and he got absolutely hopelessly mixed up; instead of admitting his confusion to the Committee Chairman and turning the matter over to his officials, he went on and on and he got worse and worse. After the Committee was finished I remember Bruce Keith and I spent a couple of nights going over the manuscript of his remarks trying to correct it to make some sense out it. I also went to a meeting with Sidney Smith in NATO. It was my first experience at a NATO meeting and it was in Paris in the fall of 1958. Geoffrey Pearson was in the NATO Secretariat and Bill Barton was the head of our division in those days. That autumn there was a Berlin crisis, and you may recall the Soviets were threatening to prevent the American forces from having access to Berlin. John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State and a very powerful, impressive guy. We sat up all one night practically until about three in the morning with Sidney Smith preparing a speech, because the next day was a very key NATO Council meeting. The question was that the Americans threatened to blast their way through with an armoured brigade, which would mean the fat would be in the fire. Sidney Smith looked over our draft and did not like it; he wanted to change this and that. I sat in at the Council meeting, where there was quite a heated debate about whether the Allies should use force to make sure that their rights of access to Berlin were protected.

 

[HILL] This was the time of the "free city", was it not?

 

[CAMERON] That is right. I remember that John Foster Dulles in the course of his statement, or maybe it was in the course of the discussion, implied that if the Soviets did not back down that they would maybe have to consider deploying the Strategic Air Command, the thing that everybody was trying to avoid. Sidney Smith had had a good statement prepared. He read about two paragraphs of it, pushed away his statement and in a very emotional voice said: "Mr. Chairman, Canada will not support this action that the Secretary of State is proposing. We hate nuclear weapons, Mr. Chairman, and we will not go along with this idea that John Foster Dulles is proposing". I remember his outburst very clearly. It is probably not in the record of the meeting because there was no formal record kept of this exchange. But what Dulles was saying, was part of American policy at the time. They had superiority in nuclear weapons and Dulles favoured using their superiority as a deterrent, a means of reinforcing their policies vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Sidney Smith, I suspect, was reflecting one aspect of the Canadian psyche which has always been anti-nuclear. I believe he interpreted Dulles' statement to mean that the USA was getting ready to start to use nuclear weapons unless the Soviets backed down. In any event, Sidney Smith was very, very emotional; I believe he died shortly afterwards. He seemed to be out of his depth and I have heard this from other people. He was a very fine man, but he just did not comprehend many of issues although he had a gut feeling about a lot of them.

 

[HILL] In fact then, what you had was people, like Sidney Smith in particular, and perhaps to some degree Howard Green later on, who had their own particular viewpoints. They were very worthy men, but they had difficulty dealing with some of these issues and particularly in relation to the Defence Department. The CF-104 seems to me a good example. The Air Force had very clear ideas that they wanted the CF-104.

 

[CAMERON] Oh sure, because as professional airmen, they wanted the best available which at the time was the CF-104. As I recall, the politician or the average Canadian did not understand that this aircraft was to take on a nuclear-strike role even though they were not designed for that kind of a role. The German Air Force had a terrible time with them. They later called it the widow-maker because of the number of crashes. But it was a high-performance aircraft, it was the Cadillac of the Air Force in those days, it really was.

 

[HILL] Canada had the CF-104 and the Honest John but did not have the nuclear warheads for them, and was not really able to do the nuclear role.

 

[CAMERON] But I think the explanation for that is very simple. Not only did you have this difference of view or attitude between the Defence people and the people in External, and the lack of personal rapport between Pearkes and Sidney Smith and between Harkness and Green, but you had Green as a champion of world disarmament. Howard Green was in World War I and like most people that have served in the forces during wartime, developed strong views about warfare. Unfortunately, he was naive when it came to the realities of disarmament. I think he was sincere but I think he was really naive. He was strongly in favour of general and complete disarmament, of everything dealing with disarmament to the point where I think his views did not reflect much sense of realism in discussions with people who were involved in the business. But I also think he saw disarmament to some extent in political terms as an issue popular among many Canadians especially on the West Coast.

 

[HILL] So what you have is some degree of confusion in Canada's policy towards NATO. What kind of impact did this have on Canada's role in NATO?

 

[CAMERON] Well, in this way. Howard Green believed that.you could be sort of pure by not having anything to do with nuclear weapons. Therefore we gave serious consideration, and the Americans probably thought we were out of our minds, to an arrangement whereby the delivery systems (e.g., Bomarcs) would be stationed in Canada, but the warheads would be stored across the border and brought across the border when there was a crisis. And this included the warheads for the missiles to be installed on aircraft for air defence. I have forgotten the name, but today they have a conventional warhead which is better than the nuclear warhead in use in those days for the same purpose of shooting down bombers. In those days, the only missile they installed on an air defence aircraft was the one with a nuclear warhead. The philosophy seemed to be that if we kept the warheads down in Colorado Springs or somewhere in the US and had the missiles on the plane in Canada (it was the same with the Bomarc), we were "pure". Howard Green's position seemed to be that as soon as you brought the warheads into Canada, you became part of the nuclear club. He tended to see things in simplistic terms. On the other hand if we were really serious about it we should have told the Americans "No SAC bomber flights over Canada, no export of the uranium." Probably he did not want to annoy the Americans to that extent. To give him credit, I think that he really felt that it was getting us in the nuclear club if we had nuclear warheads in Canada, and that led to the crisis later on. I also remember that the Conservatives insisted that the US obtain approval every three weeks for overflights of Canada by SAC aircraft. A lot of people thought at the time that this lack of more generous advance authority for SAC implied a lack of confidence in SAC's role as the West's main deterrent. This was another part of the whole problem in that I do not think anybody in senior levels of the Canadian Government ever acknowledged SAC's role except possibly in the sense it was generally regarded as the "Sword" or nuclear deterrent, with NATO's conventional forces being the "Shield". And as you know, the Americans did use the sword as a means of pressure on the Soviets during the period before the Soviets achieved nuclear parity. The Cuban missile crisis was the classic example of where the Soviets knew they were nuclear underdogs, and they backed down. The experience convinced the Soviets to build up then nuclear strength.

 

[HILL] And in your view, this ambivalence had a rather unfortunate impact on Canada, and on the perception of Canada within NATO?

 

[CAMERON] I do not know how it was looked on in NATO itself. It is a little difficult to just say NATO. I think some of the allies thought we were incredibly naive. I remember going to one NATO meeting and Howard Green spoke about the importance of dealing with the non-aligned and the developing world. He took up quite a bit of the time of the Council to tell them about his experience of sitting next to one of the African delegations in New York. I think it was the Cameroon delegate who impressed Howard Green very much. He then proceeded to lecture the Ministers about good will, and the importance of it in dealing with the developing countries, and using this as an example. He talked enthusiastically about his experience at the UN; many of Europeans, who regard themselves as pretty sophisticated, did not really think this was quite necessary for a Canadian Minister, who had only been in office for a year, to lecture the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, including the French Minister. I think it was the Frenchman who turned aside, and said something to the effect of, if Howard Green had been as long in Africa as he had, he would not talk that way about the Africans. In the view of many the Europeans, Howard Green was seen as unsophisticated, naive, and a do-gooder. There was some puzzlement among the Europeans as to why Canada would have a Minister who was not only strong on disarmament and on peacekeeping but did not have much to say about security; indeed he seemed to be unrealistic and naive about security.

 

[HILL] So, between 1962 and 1966 you were in Washington? This was a crucial period in inter-allied relations because of the beginnings of the problem with France. You have this whole business of the MLF also. What was your impression of that period? Particularly, what was Canada’s influence in Washington on NATO issues at this time?

 

[CAMERON] Again, it reflects the state of affairs in Ottawa. First of all we had the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which I guess was the first big crisis. I can remember there was a real fear of nuclear war. People were stocking up on canned goods in the cellar. I do not think I have ever experienced anything like it since then. It was a real worry that the world was going to go up in flames, and you had a situation where the US government was acting in a way which kept all information in a tight little ball, restricted to two or three people in the Cabinet. The State Department did not know anything. Now maybe the Secretary of State did, but there was certainly no information around, about what was going on or what they were preparing. They knew the Soviets were putting in these missiles, because they had been watching Cuba for a long time. Soviet relations with the United States were bad; Khrushchev thought Kennedy was a naive, Harvard Bostonian. He thought he could push him around because he had done that I think, in Vienna at the meeting before, and there was a very bad personal relationship between the two. At the same time, I do not think East-West relations were regarded as being at a critical point, and as a result none of the allies were informed of what was going on. This went on for two or three weeks resulting in a real build-up of tension. All kinds of people went down to try and pick up any little bits of information, Charles Ritchie used to have lunch with various people, and everybody was trying to find out what was going on. The Ambassador, along with his NATO colleagues, was called in to the State Department an hour before Kennedy made his statement on television announcing what had happened, what they were going to do. The former US Ambassador to Canada, Livy Merchant, was sent to Ottawa as a special emissary with photographs of the deployment of the missile sites in Cuba. It all happened within hours, the whole thing, and then I guess the next thing that happened on the Canadian side was an announcement, I have forgotten exactly how it came out, but I think it has been recorded elsewhere many times, that Diefenbaker came out with a statement that said, in effect, that they ought to send the United Nations in to confirm the accuracy of these American photographs. That is what it sounded like in Washington, and of course this immediately implied that the Canadian Government did not really accept, at face value, the statement of the President of the United States, that the Soviets had deployed these missiles in Cuba. So you can imagine what kind of reaction the Americans had to that. And then related to that, was the question of them putting their air defence forces on a more advanced state of alert. You had the NORAD forces where you had the commander-in-chief of NORAD also the commander of US air defence forces. The same man wears two hats but I think I am right in saying that the US commander put their forces on what they call DEFCON 3, which is a high state of readiness, not the highest but a fairly high state, and that on the Canadian side, the Canadian Government did not take a similar decision. This is still a matter of debate; what action was taken by Canada. I was in Washington so I was not involved. The point I am making is that this was another source of more than irritation for the Americans. First, the statement by the Prime Minister of Canada which could have been read, although I do not think he necessarily meant it that way, but it could have been read as implying a certain degree of distrust or questioning of President Kennedy's decision. In fairness to the Canadian Ministers, I think it reflected more Howard Green's idea that the UN should have a role to play, and a lot of people thought the UN should have a role to play in that situation. So that event, and our reaction to that event, coloured very much the relationship between Washington and Ottawa. In addition, President Kennedy came to Ottawa and in his address to the combined House of Commons and the Senate suggested that it would really be a damn good thing if Canadians got off their fannies and joined the Organization of American States. His proposal was not well received and in addition to that he wrote a nasty note to one of his colleagues about Diefenbaker, which became public. I have forgotten exactly what it said, but it was something like: "This S.O.B. is from the backwoods." Well, all these things coloured the relationship between the two governments. And here you had a President who was very popular in Canada. Kennedy represented the new wave, the new look; his wife was popular and he seemed to bring a completely different approach to Government. The amazing thing to me is that despite catastrophes such as the Bay of Pigs—it was a real disaster run by Kennedy—his popularity remained high in Canada, a popularity which is still undiminished. However, the relationship between the governments was very poor. On the official level we all had our contacts but they could not tell us anything during the Cuban crisis. They were not allowed to and probably did not even know themselves. I have not read Bobby Kennedy's book, but you know it was a real hundred days, a really tough time and they did not allow anybody into anything. They were scared to death that the Soviets would find out what they were doing and they did not want any leaks. And, as you know, NATO is not exactly a sealed chamber.

 

[HILL] Did that improve significantly with the advent of the Pearson Government?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, I think it did improve. In 1965 I went to Germany.

 

[HILL] Then you have the Vietnam War.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, the Vietnam War started when I was in Washington. I remember very well McNamara and his whiz kids bringing all these computers in, and they professed to have the answer to everything. It was just a matter of putting it all in the computer, and figuring how many tons of bombs had to be dropped on the Viet Cong; then it would not be very long before the bad guys would stop beating the good guys.

 

[HILL] A very un-Canadian approach to things!

 

[CAMERON] The standard line in those days was that if the North would leave the South alone, everything would be all right.

 

[HILL] I remember some of that.

 

[CAMERON] One thing I do remember there is this: when Johnson came in after Kennedy was killed, that was a traumatic event. Johnson came in and—talk about Ronald Reagan being a cowboy—this guy was a cowboy, a traditional cowboy. You may have read these stories about how he treated Pearson down on the ranch. I do not think Johnson ever forgave Pearson for making that speech in which he mentioned Vietnam. For Pearson to go into his own backyard, and to tell him to stop bombing the bad guys was too much. It is in the American character, to believe in the use of force, whereas we do not. They carry guns and everybody is allowed to have one. For a Canadian to come down and tell them how to run their railroad especially in dealing with those bastards the Viet Cong was unforgiveable. I believe one of those diaries of Charles Ritchie could tell you more about the relationship. In short, I do not think that relations improved all that much with Pearson, partly because of that incident.

 

[HILL] But despite Vietnam, this was also true from 1962 on, as you mentioned. The Soviets were building up their forces because of Cuba. But also that time was a great period of detente as well, because you had the partial test ban, you had the movement towards the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That was a great phase of detente, which presumably Canada was pushing for as well.

 

[CAMERON] Certainly there were moves on the arms control front, they were very important, and one of the important considerations was the extent to which there was nuclear fallout, and a lot of it came down in British Columbia from the Soviets tests. You talk about acid rain, they had a high nuclear content of radioactivity to some of the rain that came down in the West Coast after the Soviets let off an enormous nuclear test, the biggest one I think they have ever exploded in the atmosphere. And there were clouds with high levels of radioactivity which drifted over Canada. During that period an agreement was reached not to test in the atmosphere. Certainly, there was a lot of movement on the arms control front, and possibly I was doing Howard Green a disservice to suggest he was naive. I think he was naive about how to get those things done. They are achieved because the countries find it in their national interest to agree to it, but not because people are going around making statements in the UN. Also there was a move towards detente, and I think there was the beginning in NATO of the concept of the twin pillars of detente and defence based on the study done by Belgium's Foreign Minister. -You know from your time in NATO I am sure. It is true, detente came really after the Cuban missile crisis, and recognition by the USSR of the need for accommodation with the West.

 

[HILL] This was a period when NATO was moving forward to detente and also a period when France was moving off to a partly independent position. Did Canada have much influence in Washington, say in the early '60s? How would you assess Canada's influence in Washington, say under the Liberal Government, not talking about Howard Green, but after that, say pushing for more moves on detente, towards the Non-Proliferation Treaty and also with respect to relations with France for keeping France within the Alliance?

 

[CAMERON] Oh, I think we played a part, I think we played a considerable part. I do not know whether you could say it was with Washington, as much as it was in the NATO forum. Our relations with France were always pretty good because of the bicultural, bilingual nature of our country, I think. I cannot remember who was our Ambassador there at the time, but I think that we did do a lot to try to ameliorate the relations with France, to try to ensure that a serious situation did not develop when they decided to pull out of the military side of NATO. As you know, I think in practice they continued to co-operate pretty well on the military side, even though their forces are no longer integrated. I think we have traditionally been more conscious of the French outlook on NATO problems, particularly when a lot of their positions are a reaction to an aggressive American attitude to a lot of things. I think it is rather difficult to distinguish between the influence we have with Washington, as opposed to the influence we might have indirectly. As I recall we did play a very active role in the NATO Council, both before and particularly after Pearson came in, on a lot of these issues.

 

[HILL] But rather than pushing for them bilaterally through Washington...?

 

[CAMERON] Well, we did what we could in Washington. But on the higher political level, all of this was coloured to some extent by the rather poor relations that we had, certainly during the Diefenbaker period.

 

[HILL] I wonder if we could just deal, before we break, with one last phase, which is from 1966 to 1969. You were Minister- Counsellor in Bonn, and this was certainly a very important juncture in Alliance affairs. This was the period when to some degree the Germans were caught between the French and the Americans. De Gaulle had confronted the Germans with this sort of choice, particularly over the nuclear guarantee to Germany. I do not know if that was already over by then; for a period there the Germans were really in a dilemma because they wanted to maintain the American guarantee but they did not want to alienate the French.

 

[CAMERON] Are you referring to his proposal for the Three-Power Directorate?

 

[HILL] Yes, that sort of thing.

 

[CAMERON] I can say from my experiences there and elsewhere that we were very concerned about the Three-Power Directorate that de Gaulle was pushing, and I guess our views were very sympathetic to the German concerns. And I think that we did all we could by putting other proposals forward. I remember there were a number of variations on the theme as it might apply to practical situations. For example, who would have control over the decision to use nuclear weapons, whether it would be all members of the NATO Council or only those who had nuclear weapons. There were a whole series of situations that were looked at, you know, in terms of how do you arrive at this horrendous decision, to allow your forces to deploy, not only to deploy, but to use nuclear weapons, given the fact that the American President had the ultimate decision on the release of the nuclear warheads. How was the Council going to be organized to deal with this; this issue is still current today. It is an extremely difficult question of consultation. As I recall throughout the time that I was dealing with NATO issues, we were probably number one in pushing for more consultation on a number of things, including the question of consultative procedures for the release of nuclear weapons.

 

[HILL] Yes, and this was in 1967, while you were in Bonn. The Alliance had developed the strategy of forward defence and flexible response, and I think that was the point when the Nuclear Planning Group and the Nuclear Defence Affairs Committee were established. But, on the other hand, I think this was a combination of work done over quite a long time, and perhaps those issues were more or less resolved by the time you were in Bonn.

 

[CAMERON] I would say this is an issue that will never be resolved, in the sense that you can work out all the plans or procedures you want, but when it comes down the crunch—and I think this was shown in Cuba—it is a matter of confidence between the governments at the time whether they are willing to consult on an issue of such importance. The important thing is that they do not allow too much discretionary authority to the field commanders; because they do have procedures to deal with an emergency. The presidential authority may have to be granted in advance. That is the serious thing I think, and those above all, ought to be looked at periodically. I am not up to date on this, but I think it makes sense if you are talking about North American defence, for a commander on the West Coast to have power to use nuclear weapons to shoot down a bomber which is approaching Victoria or Vancouver or Seattle. But does it make sense to give it to a commander on the forward front in Europe? I do not think he has it now, but I mean that was the kind of issue NATO was grappling with.

 

[HILL] Are those the kind of things you were dealing with while you were in Bonn?

 

[CAMERON] No. We would not get involved in that. That sort of thing is done in the NATO Nuclear Planning Group, a highly classified club. In Bonn, we had to divide our time between bilateral and international questions. If you take the international issues, there were all these issues with the French; we had to report on what the German attitude was on De Gaulle, on relations with between France and Germany, the question of French forces in Germany—they still have forces in the Rhineland—the attitude of the Germans to a whole series of issues in the UN and NATO, and disarmament, etc.. You would have to sort of plot your week as to what, depending on what you heard from Ottawa, what you thought was important to report. We covered everything. I did not do it all but I supervised most of the material; another big issue was the question of the Canadian Forces in Germany. When I was there the Forces moved from northern Germany south down to Lahr where they co-habited, as they say, for a brief period, with the French. When the French eventually left they did not leave a very tidy establishment; they were not noted for their house-keeping. But quite a bit of time was spent dealing with some of the problems related to the move. We also had lots of visitors and many ministerial visits. Bonn is a small, quiet little capital, but Germany is an important ally, so we had a lot of work. But it was a good period.

 

[HILL] You mentioned the move from Soest to Lahr, but when was that? Were you there when the troop cuts decision was announced?

 

[CAMERON] I came back. I was involved a little bit here in Ottawa. I was brought back at the end of 1968 because I knew a little bit about the German side, and I was in Ottawa when that happened.

 

[HILL] But they decided to move south anyway, prior to that, in other words?

 

[CAMERON] Oh yes, it was a move before that time. The troop cuts came later, it was with Trudeau, and Trudeau did not come in until

 

[HILL] And also, of course, the Canadian air wing was moved from Zweibrucken to Lahr.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, I remember going to a party at the Canadian base in Zweibrucken, which is a beautiful little town famous for its Rose Festival. The Canadian relations with the German population were extraordinarily good, so much better than was the case with the Americans, for a number of reasons. Anyway, the night that we went to the party, the commander had just received a telegram from Ottawa, saying that he was going to have to tell the Germans the next day that they were leaving Zweibrucken; he had all this information bottled up inside him, and he could not say anything. He had to go ahead with his speech which was full of praise for the German population, knowing that the next day he would have to tell them they were all going. We had members of our staff who dealt in more detail with specific problems. For example, we had a representative, Judge Advocate Generals' Office, that dealt with all the Status of Forces problems. There was an office that did nothing but deal with problems arising out of a special arrangement between the Canadian and German Air Forces. There was also a military attache, and a naval attache. We totalled eleven officers altogether in addition to the Ambassador.

 

[HILL] How would you assess the importance of the Canadian presence in Germany to the Germans? To the German Government?

 

[CAMERON] Very high. I would assess it very high, not because of the size of our Forces, but as symbolic in terms of our relationship as a North American country, our close relationship with the United States. They see it in context of the US as much as Canada. They see that if the Canadians should pull out of Germany, they would view that as an event that could either affect the United States Congressional attitude, which they watch like a hawk, or it could affect the US attitude toward their vulnerable position in the East-West context.

 

[HILL] Is there also the thought that in the event of a crisis, or even more in a war, that although the number of Canadians on the ground is relatively small, nonetheless there could be reinforcements which would come along? Does that have an impact on their thinking? Do they see this as being the first part of a larger Canadian presence in the event of a war?

 

[CAMERON] I do not know whether they would ever say that. I think they see it more as a symbol of resolve, you know, by a country that was their enemy and I think the West Germans have a high regard for Canadians and for Canada generally. There are quite a few commercial and investment links with Canada, and I think they have a fairly high regard for our position on a lot of international issues where our views, particularly in the last ten years, have been closer to the Germans than they have been to any other country in NATO. On a lot of the East-West issues, for example, we were much closer to the Germans than to other larger NATO members.

 

[HILL] Really the German question lies at the heart of European security; how would you assess the importance of NATO in dealing with the German question?

 

[CAMERON] I think it is very, very important. From my time in Eastern Europe, having been accredited to East Berlin as well as Warsaw, I do not think you can underrate the importance which NATO has in respect of that East-West issue. The existence of the two Germanys is not a confrontation in a strictly military sense, it is a confrontation in a wider political security context. Because the Soviets are so paranoid about their security, they rely on the maintenance of a cordon sanitaire which includes East Germany. Over the years, in my view, there will be a growing tendency on the part of the Germans to come together for natural human reasons, because they are all Germans. It has already started on the economic front, and I think that, it seems to me that is one of the reasons why it makes sense for Canada to continue to press for a combination of detente and defence. It does not make any sense, to my mind, to continue this confrontation ad infinitum. To the extent that we can ameliorate the relations between Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the United States and Western Europe, the better it will be for the world I think, partly because of this German problem. Until that is resolved more amicably, more in a way which will take into account Germany, and German concerns and the relations they have with their neighbours and allies, that, to my mind, will remain the raison d'etre for the continuation of NATO.

 

Part IV - Ottawa. 1968-74

 

[HILL] Ambassador Cameron, in 1968 you returned to Ottawa and were then appointed Head of the NATO and North American Division of the Department of External Affairs. A year later, I believe, you were promoted to Director General of the Bureau of Defence and Arms Control Affairs. It was in that capacity, I believe, that you also served as Canada's representative on the Permanent Joint Board on Defense.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, that is right. This was the first time that I was in the position of being the representative of the Department of External Affairs on the Board. The Department of External Affairs is represented by two officers. There is the official External Affairs member who, traditionally, has been the head of the Defense and Arms Control Bureau, and when the Chairman is absent, he is the acting Chairman of the Canadian section of the Board. A fairly interesting job. The second office is more junior in rank and acts as one of the two Secretaries in the Canadian section (the other is usually a military officer from DND).

 

[HILL] The chairman is a political figure normally, as I understand.

 

[CAMERON] Normally, the chairman of the Canadian section is appointed by the Government of the day and it has not always been political. Going back to the early days, General McNaughton had it for quite a while. More recently Arnold Heeney, when I first took over, Arnold Heeney was the chairman. He was former Secretary of the Cabinet, a distinguished public servant. So it has not always been political. John Aird later took it over and he was a political appointee in the sense that he was a Liberal member of the Senate who never ran for office in the House of Commons.

 

[HILL] Thank you for that clarification. I think that is helpful. On the more general plain, these were certainly very important years for Canada - I'm referring to 1968-74 - and for NATO and for the world in general. They were the years of the Trudeau foreign policy so far as Canada was concerned, when Canada carried out a series of reviews of foreign policy and defence policy and also cut its troop levels in Europe. The Armed Forces were also reduced in that period, in numbers. This was also the period of the publication of Foreign Policy for Canadians, and in 1971 the Defence White Paper was issued. It was the second main Defence White Paper, the previous one was in 1964. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the whole review process and what your views are on that process and also on the results of the process. For example, how was it that Canada wound up cutting its Forces in 1969, and what lay behind the White Paper, and what do you think about whether, on the whole, those moves helped or hindered Canada's efforts to promote international peace and security.

 

[CAMERON] Well, that is a big question: a number of questions I guess. First of all, I think it is true that the period was one where Canada's foreign policy was dominated very much by the new Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who came in with his very own views about the Canadian position in the world. My own personal recollection is that he tended to think that Canada's foreign policy was influenced too much by our participation in NATO and other international organizations and not oriented enough in terms of Canada's national interest. I think that was his thesis. Certainly he was very influential in developing the thesis, that Canadian foreign policy should be a direct projection of our national policy, our national domestic policy and the views that he held naturally were very influential. But, the same views were held by a number of his advisers who worked in the Privy Council at that time and in the PMO, and these views had a dramatic impact on the development of the various papers that were being produced. Now there were two sets of papers, as you pointed out. There was a set of papers on foreign policy which we used to refer to rather frivolously as multi-coloured booklets because there was a different colour for each area of the world. Then we had the Defense White Paper which came much later after the defence review in 1969. When I came back in 1968 the Government was in the process of "consulting" with academics and other people interested in security and foreign policy questions. I remember attending a seminar which was held over in Hull, for one or two days, where a number of prominent professors from various universities and various people who were interested in foreign policy were given a briefing, and there was a long discussion of various issues including Canadian participation in NATO. That was followed up by a series of inter-departmental discussions on the position Canada was taking in NATO and discussions regarding NATO. My recollection of the actual procedures is a little hazy. I think there are a number of articles that have been written and I am sure that they will clarify - when particular papers went to Cabinet and when they did not. From the point of this interview I think it would be more relevant just to give my impressions of the way the scene developed. As I recall, the review that was going on in National Defence took place very often in a separate compartment, away from the reviews that were going on in foreign affairs, and this was something we in the bureau were very conscious of. We did everything we could to try to bring the two together since we were the link between the two departments. The Bureau of Defence and Arms Control was essentially the link, the liaison with the Department of National Defence. Consequently, it was important that the positions that were adopted on the defence side were consistent with our position on foreign policy and vice versa. This was a very difficult task and there were a number of bureaucratic obstacles in the way. There were the usual rivalries between departments and personalities. In practice the key role was often played by the Privy Council Office, partly because of the dominant personality of the Prime Minister and partly because the views of National Defence and the views of External Affairs did not always coincide. In addition, I don't think there was as much consultation as there should have been.

 

[HILL] Can I ask you then one question about the origins of this whole process? My impression is that when Prime Minister Trudeau came to power, not only he himself, but also some of the people that he had around him or that he brought in, for example from the PCO or other agencies, had certain pre-conceptions about the world that they wanted to feed into Canadian foreign policy. And in fact one of these pre-conceptions was that they were not particularly impressed with the utility of NATO from Canada's own point of view; that they wanted to move more towards a foreign policy based partly on Canada's own national self interest. Another thing they did not want was, they did not like this idea which had developed of Canada as the helpful fixer in international affairs. They did not like NATO and they did not like the helpful-fixer idea very much and they wanted to move to some new kind of system. I wonder if you could comment on this.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, certainly. I think that my recollection is that he did come in with very definite clear-cut ideas as to what he wanted Canada's policy to be, and I think that he also thought that this policy should be less influenced by our role in the Alliance, that we should be much more independent in the sense that our policy would reflect our national interests and less the interests of our alliance. On the question of a helpful fixer, I think that may have played a part but I am not sure that it was a major element in his thinking. I think he also believed at the outset of his mandate that the role of the foreign service and the role of the diplomatic missions abroad were much less, how shall we say, valuable in terms of informing the Government about what was going on in the world than I think he did later on. There is a good deal of evidence that he changed his point of view about foreign service, and the usefulness of embassies abroad. You may recall that shortly after he became Prime Minister he reportedly said that if you read the New York Times and the Manchester Guardian carefully you could really find all there was to know about what was going on in the world. Which is beside the point. It is not a matter of simply knowing what goes on in the world, but it is a matter of having a privileged access to what a particular government is thinking, not just what it may be doing as reported in the press. But, certainly he did come in with a different point of view and I think he was particularly strong on the question of Canadian participation in NATO. My recollection is that the question of cut-backs in the Alliance was very much on his mind. It may be at one time he wanted to remove all our forces. I do not recall having seen any evidence of an actual intention on the part of the Prime Minister to get out entirely. But certainly there were elements in the Cabinet that were sympathetic to a very large reduction and even complete withdrawal. There were also elements in the Cabinet which were very strongly opposed to a reduction, notably the Minister of Defence, Cadieux. We had to prepare papers for the Cabinet - and I can recall one instance where we were given for comment and for briefing notes a memorandum which argued that if Canada withdrew half of our forces from NATO and did this voluntarily, this would be followed by a voluntary action on the part of the Soviet Union to withdraw one-half of its forces from Czechoslovakia. In other words we would be the good boys and we would be so good that they would want to do the same thing. We had to point out that this was a rather naive view of the world and that it was very unlikely that if we cut back that you could expect any comparable parallel action by the Soviet Union. So, there were elements within the Government I think that were sympathetic to this, and it was not just a question of the Prime Minister in my view. There were other members of the Cabinet, some of whom were very influential, who felt this way. Often it would turn out that proposals which had been developed by National Defence in consultation with External Affairs would be changed at the last minute by people in the Privy Council. Among the papers that would go to the Cabinet - there might be one paper which would, say, command the support of, say, the Minister of National Defence and the Secretary of State for External Affairs but there would be another paper which would come out from the Privy Council and/or the Prime Minister's Office. The net result of all of this was, as you could imagine, a fair amount of confusion in the bureaucracy and also a great difficulty, I think, in conveying the government's views to our Ambassador in NATO, Ross Campbell.

 

[HILL] But, you mentioned papers produced by the PMO and PCO themselves; I mean, how far did they go? I presume they were on the other side; they were wanting to diminish Canada's input to NATO. Did they have their own papers in addition to those you mentioned where they were modifying what came from External.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, my recollection is that there were papers which were done separately by the PMO/PCO, putting into them suggestions for change in the role of the Canadian Forces, the size of the Canadian Forces. These were papers which came out of the PMO/PCO, without consultation with anybody else.

 

[HILL] Obviously, there was a vigorous debate which went on inside the Government. And this particular debate was all inside the Government as I understand it, and when I say Government, I mean the Cabinet, External Affairs, DND and PCO and so on. And it did not involve outsiders particularly at this stage.

 

[CAMERON] No, it was merely inside the Government.

 

[HILL] A vigorous debate, I mean to the point where you might say it was a fight over the question of whether or not to maintain or to cut Canadian troop levels in Europe.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, my recollection is there was a vigorous debate, and I mentioned, I think, that there were elements in the Government which certainly were sympathetic to cutting. There were also strong elements opposed to cutting. One argument which was used particularly by the Department of External Affairs was that one should not look at our defence contribution purely in terms of our contribution to the security of Europe, but we should also look at it in terms of our relations with the members of the European Community. The question of our trade with Europe, the question of our whole overall relationship with Britain and all our allies and so on would undoubtedly be seriously affected by any change in the level of our Forces, particularly if the nature of the consultation did not indicate that they were agreeable to the type of change that we had in mind. This view, which was borne out by facts later on, apparently did not carry much weight with the Prime Minister. He did not think that the German Government would necessarily be influenced by the fact that we were cutting back the the size of our Forces in Germany. I think Trudeau realized the relationship later on when the man that he was dealing with in the German Government as Chancellor was Schmidt who at the time of the withdrawal was Minister of Defence. I think he eventually accepted the view propounded by External Affairs which at the time was that this reduction in NATO could have a serious impact on our relations with the European Community, and with the individual members of the Community.

 

[HILL] I believe there was some preliminary discussion beforehand in NATO about the troop cut decision. There was some consultation of a sort. It was the decision itself, the nature of the decision itself, which was most upsetting to the others, rather than the question of consultative procedures. But what was most striking for anybody who was in Europe at the time was that this came very shortly after Czechoslovakia. The Europeans especially had not yet recovered confidence after the traumatic experience of August, 1968. But that did not impress those in Canada who were interested in Canada making cuts.

 

[CAMERON] Those points were made, as I recall, in the submissions that External Affairs put forward. We were not present in the Cabinet discussions, and I do not think many officials were. As I mentioned, this particular memorandum that we had to comment on was prepared by one Minister who had no responsibility for External Affairs. We were given the morning of the Cabinet meeting to comment to our Minister. The memorandum, I assume, reflected the view of that particular gentleman who thought by doing this that it would be such a positive step in terms of international relations that the Soviet Union would withdraw an equivalent amount from Czechoslovakia. I mean to us it suggested a pretty naive view of the world. So I would guess that the discussion in Cabinet did not place a great deal of weight on the fact that Czechoslovakia had just been invaded by Soviet forces. The main consideration was that we should cut back in Europe, that we should point out to the Europeans we had been there a long time, we had other heavy responsibilities in North America and we had to look after our own backyard as well as do something over there.

 

[HILL] I suppose also there was Mr. Trudeau's interest in the Third World, development and so on, which was as well a sort of looking out, at least intellectually, toward a broader world scene. This was partly based on his own experiences in his youth and so on, and his travels to China and all that sort of thing. Did any of that sort of thing appear in these discussions at that time?

 

[CAMERON] No, at that time I do not recall such points being raised. I think that undoubtedly some of these experiences shaped Trudeau's views and came out later on - but I do not recall that having been an important factor at the time. I think that one of the rather dramatic developments was the extent to which a number, some of the allies, reportedly attempted to get us to reconsider. Certainly some of the ambassadors in NATO were very upset about it; the Belgians were particularly upset about this. According to reports we received, it was a very emotional scene for the Minister of National Defence when his Belgian colleague, with tears in his eyes, pleaded with Canada not to do this.

 

[HILL] That was after the decision had been announced?

 

[CAMERON] Pretty well, I mean Ross Campbell could tell you more about this, I am sure. There was not any suggestion that we would reconsider. It was a question that we made our decision and that was our decision.

 

[HILL] We were also looking towards the day when the Alliance would no longer be necessary.

 

[CAMERON] In other words, consistent with the idea of detente. That was nothing particularly novel, everybody was talking about the twin pillars of deterrence and detente, and detente assumed a more normal relationship between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, which at some future time might involve the gradual disappearance of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

 

[HILL] I think that is a point that is worth mentioning. In 1971 it was no longer the immediate aftermath of Czechoslovakia, even in Europe. Even the Europeans had moved on, and they were already talking about a European Security Conference and so on. But I wonder if you could tell us a bit about "Foreign Policy for Canadians", about that process. My impression was that that was a somewhat different kind of process. Initially, with the troop cuts issue, you had Mr. Trudeau and some of his people coming in with their pre-conceptions about the world. "Foreign Policy for Canadians", I had the impression, was a kind of academic exercise by and large; it was the high tide of functionalism in the study of international relations in the universities and this was imported into Ottawa; and you had a mix of all kinds of people involved in producing this document, which was a look at the world not in national interest terms or whatever, but some sort of broader analytical terms. How would you see "Foreign Policy for Canadians"?

 

[CAMERON] First of all I would agree that there was an overdose of functionalism, a new way of looking at things incorporated in the whole approach to our review of foreign policy. It looked at the world in regions and the papers that were produced in various regions were very much in the nature of an account of what we were doing, not so much as to where we were going. There was not very much new in the way of policy in any of the papers and the multi-coloured booklets that came out were notable for the fact that there was no booklet dealing with relations with the United States - to put it mildly, a rather key area of our foreign policy. The booklets described what we were doing in Latin America, in Asia, and in Europe, but nothing about the United States. As I recall, the reason for it was that they could not get any agreement in Cabinet as to how to proceed. Because our relations with the United States are so all-pervasive and influence indirectly our relations with almost every region, especially Latin America, they represent a critical aspect of our whole approach to international affairs. so they,ended by having an article, signed by Mitchell Sharp, who was Minister of External Affairs at the time. It set out our approach to relations with the United States in terms of Three Options. Mr. Sharp's choice of the Third Option, which reflected our concern about an increasing dependence on the United States economically, was misinterpreted by many as an indication that we were turning away from the United States in favour of Europe. I think a lot of misunderstanding arose as a result of the way the Third Option was treated in the press, and even the academics had a distorted notion as to what was intended. I do not personally think it was ever intended that we should in any way change our attitude towards the United States. It was more a reflection of the philosophy of people like Walter Gordon and the Liberal thinkers who were concerned about the degree of US control of Canadian industry and US investment; there was, in a sense, a concern that we should be more multilateral in our approach to economic and trade issues and that to do so we should try to increase our trade relations with Europe. This article by Mr. Sharp was misunderstood. But to my mind it was yet another indication of the extent to which security policy, foreign policy, and economic policy were not treated as being inter-related. In the security area, we proceeded to justify a reduction of our » contribution to NATO, and in the foreign trade policy area we were talking about expanding our relations with Europe.

 

[HILL] The article on Canada-US relations also came just after the Connally affair?

 

[CAMERON] I think I would agree with you that the White Paper exercise, at least the foreign policy exercise, was very much a case of fitting in with the trends of the day, of having a functional look at our foreign policy. But in fact the papers that were prepared did not contain very much in the way of policy and certainly not in the way of new policy. It was more of a world travelogue if you want to be sarcastic about it. There was not very much in it that was new.

 

[HILL] There was not really much in there to guide officials in the Department afterwards. There were no tracks laid down that you had to follow. It almost justified doing anything.

 

[CAMERON] I remember. The person you should have an interview with on that is Geoff Murray, do you know him?

 

[HILL] No.

 

[CAMERON] Well, he was the man, he had the task of writing most of the papers. He was given the raw material by various sections of the Department and old Geoff was put off in a corner of the Langevin Block and, I remember, with piles of cups of coffee. He had to grind out this stuff and turn it back to the various bureaus to see if it would wash. But he was given the raw material and he went to work on it.

 

[HILL] We could turn also to "Defence in the 1970s," which was published in 1971. It came out just after "Foreign Policy for Canadians," and in a way I think you can find, shall we say, the philosophic justification for it in "Foreign Policy for Canadians." But in a way, also, the origins of "Defence in the 70s" are in the 1969 troop cut decision. In a way, what happened in "Defence in the 70s" was that they stood the old order of priorities on its head i.e. NATO having originally, in the 1964 White Paper, been first, now it slipped down to third.

 

[CAMERON] And then former Prime Minister Pearson was very angry.

 

[HILL] Could you tell us something about that process, as you saw it, of the preparation of the Defence White Paper, particularly with regards to Canada's role in NATO?

 

[CAMERON] Well, I think it was a justification for the decisions that had been taken earlier; and it stood the priorities on their head. It was written largely by a man who is now our Ambassador to NATO, Gordon Smith, for Donald Macdonald who was the Minister of National Defence at the time. He was brought in especially from External to do the work. By and large there was a pretty good consultative process, looking at it from a bureaucratic viewpoint, and pretty good consultation with External Affairs. Of course the policy had largely been determined by the actions that the Government had already taken, so there was not a great deal of debate about essential issues. It was more about what would we be doing to carry out priority number one, the defence of North America, or the mobile forces they had talked about in the 1969 statement, that kind of thing. As I recall, the United States were somewhat mystified too, as to what the White Paper would mean in real terms, especially with respect to North American defence. We were cutting back in Europe and said we were doing it partly because we wanted to devote more to the defence of Canada and North America. At the same time, I think the inter-departmental consultative process went reasonably well, certainly much better than at the time of the NATO force reductions. The study was prepared mainly in the Department of Defence, whereas the final version of the other paper originated principally in PCO and some of the proposals seemed to develop out of thin air. I recall some of the senior people in National Defence were almost tearing their hair out by their roots when they were faced with some of the wild ideas that emanated from the PCO at the time of the 1969 Paper.

 

[HILL] The White Paper did maintain the NATO commitment although it was third in the order of priority. In practice, as time went on, the NATO commitment virtually re-emerged as number one priority, because that was where the money was put.

 

[CAMERON] I can say this, that in terms of explaining this decision of 1969 to our allies, we had many ambassadors here in Ottawa, who would come in and say what does all this mean. We had to point out that Canada was staying in NATO Europe. We were cutting back for various reasons but we were staying in Europe. That was the important point.

 

[HILL] In practice the NATO commitment remained as the most prominent one in terms of practical defence objectives. Would you agree with that?

 

[CAMERON] There were quite a lot of new things they were buying for North American air defence, but not as a result of that decision. But there were expenses in North America that were considerable. My recollection is that there was nothing dramatically new, or new things that were acquired, to underline this new emphasis on North American defence. It was apparent, I think, in the following ten years, that the Government was not really serious about doing much about capital expenditures for defence and they let the whole defence establishment run down; and that is one of the problems the Government is facing today. It takes an enormous amount to make up the neglect during that period.

 

[HILL] In your position between 1968 and 1974 you were presumably going over to NATO headquarters periodically and involved in the consultations over there on behalf of Canada. I wonder what sort of reaction you felt Canada got from these changes in policy and how did it affect Canada’s role in NATO?

 

[CAMERON] There used to be a joke going around that - it does not necessarily reflect accurately the view, but rather the atmosphere at the time - that the Canadian decision was regarded by the Allies as a little dog coming in from outside with a party going on (1969 was NATO's twentieth anniversary) and peeing on the carpet. No, it was not popular. Cut-backs are never popular in this kind of organization, but I think if you look back on it it seems to me that it was handled very badly by the Government. The Government could have done a lot more to try and ameliorate the political and economic implications of this decision. It was very much, we want to do this, this is it boys. Consultation pretty well amounted to telling them what we wanted to do and intended to do. My recollection is that the decision did have an impact on our voice in NATO and I think it was offset to some extent by the capability and the talent of the man was on the spot, our very able ambassador, Ross Campbell. I think that offset the negative fall out to some extent, but it was bound to have an impact.

 

[HILL] At the same time Canada was pursuing through NATO various other objectives like, for example, attempting to promote the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the MBFR negotiations, the SALT talks and so on. Canada was trying to assist them in moving forward. Particularly in that whole phase from about 1970 up to 1973-74, when these things were moving forward in quite a remarkable way. What was your feeling about Canada's input, at that time, into Alliance consultation on detente-oriented issues?

 

[CAMERON] Well, I think the effectiveness of our contribution to Alliance discussions of these issues has been determined very much by the quality of what we have to say. There is a difference, in my view, between the kind of reaction that you might get when you bring something up at the ministerial level. But when you are dealing with the so-called "professionals" and discussing complex questions such as MBFR or SALT, what is important is not so much whether you recently cut back part of your Forces but whether you have done your homework, whether you have thought out new ideas, which might assist, for example, in East-West negotiations. If you take SALT as an example, I think, considering the size of our organization, and the size of the limited amount of talent available, I think we contributed quite a bit to NATO discussions. If you compare us with other countries involved, for example, with the MBFR talks in Vienna (and you probably know more about this than most people do), my recollection is that there were about three or four countries that would really do their homework. We were one of them. The rest of the delegations would often go to these meetings with very little in the way of instructions or considered advice.

 

[HILL] What I do recall is on some issues like CSCE, Canada was quite a strong force for pushing continually forward.

 

[CAMERON] ... and for getting the Americans involved.

 

[HILL] Well, because actually the Americans, as did the British in that period, fluctuated a great deal. As a matter of fact, the Americans were not very interested in CSCE.

 

[CAMERON] That is right.

 

[HILL] The British switched back and forth because they changed governments at that time, and I think, if I am not mistaken, I think the Labour Government was pro-CSCE, but the Conservatives were not. Whereas I think Canada continually went down one direct line. I think the constant reiteration of the Canadian position had an impact.

 

[CAMERON] I think it is a political impact in the sense that it affects the people at the top at the ministerial level, but I do not think it has very much impact farther down the line. When you are dealing with this kind of issue, which is much more technical, and longstanding, the officials value the contribution of the various delegations on the basis of their grasp of the issues and how many new ideas they may have. Also important is the ability to explain these ideas. I think that we continued to have an impact on issues partly because of the quality of the work that was done by the people in Ottawa and in the missions that were involved, particularly the NATO one.

 

[HILL] In your assessment, did membership in NATO enable Canada

to pursue its goal of international peace and security? Did it provide good opportunities for Canada to pursue this objective?

 

[CAMERON] Oh yes, very much so I think, even though it had been changed, as you say, in the list of priorities. Yes, I think so, and I think that in addition to the work that is done through conferences such as MBFR and SALT, and discussions on SALT in NATO, and in other ways, I think the fact that we remained in the Alliance played a very important part in terms of our relations, not only with the Western European countries but also with the Eastern European countries. They are interested in talking to us because we are a member of NATO. They would not be interested very much in talking to us if we were Swedes. They would like to know more about what our views are on major East-West issues.

 

[HILL] You do not think there is any sense in the view - sometimes expressed - that NATO diminishes Canada's moral credibility and the impact that Canada might have in the United Nations or elsewhere, on the broader issues of international peace and security?

 

[CAMERON] I would say no. I would say, my experience would lead me to believe, that that point of view is not supported by the evidence. It is quite the contrary. I was interested to read a speech last night that Joe Clark made recently in Vancouver. It was quite a good speech, mostly about the Arctic, but there was a bit at the end about NATO. He was going after the NDP for arguing that we should get out of NATO, and he was saying that he had just come from a meeting in Brussels with the ministers where they discussed with George Schultz and others what is going on in Geneva at the Soviet-US disarmament negotiations. To the extent that we have any influence, here was an opportunity to make our views known. He was arguing in effect that if you want to have any impact on world peace and stability, you have a better chance of having some impact if you are able to get your views across to the people that are directly involved, than you do if you sit outside and make some pious statement about the necessity of doing this or that. I guess I would share that view. I think this idea that you somehow divorce yourself from your allies and that such a move would be in the Canadian interest, does not make sense to me. I do not think we should be a member of the Alliance just because we like to be in the Alliance. I think it is because the national interest is better served by being in than being out. That is my view.

 

[HILL] In your position in Ottawa in that time, you also had the responsibility, or some responsibilities, not only for NATO, but also for security issues being dealt with in the UN and for peacekeeping. I take it from what you say that you do not feel that other countries were less willing to look towards Canada, less willing to take Canadian views into account on the broader scene or in peacekeeping, for example, they were not any less willing to take Canada into account, because Canada was a member of NATO.

 

[CAMERON] Not at all, and I was involved a bit in the negotiations that led to the first joint arrangement we had with an Eastern European country, Poland, in the Sinai. I remember I used to have to deal with General Dextraze, the Chief of the Defence Staff, almost daily. We had a fairly tense period, that was in 1970 or 1971, I think, when they put the UN Forces in the Sinai. We had to negotiate the agreement, and the fact that we were a member of NATO certainly did not stand in the way of us participating. I think it is wishful thinking from those who favour getting out of NATO to say that that is an obstacle. I think if you look back at the time in 1956, when the Canadian Forces were asked by President Nasser to leave Egypt, it was partly because Nasser felt that the Egyptian population would not be able to distinguish between the British uniforms and the Canadian uniforms because the Canadian uniforms were identical to the Brits who had just invaded Egypt. But I do not think that kind of situation should be used to say, "Well, we would be better out of NATO and we would do better with UN the if we were like Sweden or Finland". The facts do not support that kind of argument.

 

[HILL] We will go on to a rather different field now, but still in the same period. While you were in Ottawa from 1968-1974, this was almost exactly coterminous with the Nixon Presidency in the United States. You took up your position just at the time that he was running the election campaign, and then he was elected at the end of the year, and took up his position at the beginning of 1969. Then you were there up until the Watergate period and so on. I was wondering how did the US behave towards NATO in the first Nixon presidency? This was the point in time when the US was thinking of getting disentangled from Vietnam. How would you assess the amount of interest in NATO?

 

[CAMERON] I think that Kissinger's view of the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union had a significant impact and very much affected the whole outlook of the United States and its allies at the time. As I recall, the initiatives that were taken in the early days of the Nixon presidency were very positive ones in terms of discussions on strategic weapons. You had the first SALT Agreement and the ABM Treaty in 1972. At the same time you had a deliberate US effort to involve the Soviets in discussions and negotiations not only on arms control, but in an effort to try and alleviate the problem they had in Vietnam. On the North American front it was a period when there was a change in the concept of North American defence. There was a gradual diminution or beginning of a slowdown in the worry about the bomber threat and the beginning of concern about the missile. Consequently, in terms of US and North American defence there was a good deal of uncertainty in the Canadian mind about where the United States was going in terms of air defence. I think that Canada was conscious of the United States' difficult position in Vietnam, and the extent to which it was really tearing at the guts of a lot of Americans. On the other hand there were those who felt that something could be done about it. Kissinger of course had a dramatic role in trying to bring about a final ending, which I guess really amounted to a US defeat, although it was never portrayed in that way. It certainly was a very sad ending to a chapter in their history.

 

[HILL] They sort of managed to save face by the troop withdrawal process and the cease fire of '73.

 

[CAMERON] I remember that particular period in personal terms. I had just been told that I was going to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Ambassador to Canada had a dinner for me and halfway through the dinner he said, "Do you mind if we turn the television set on", just as we got to the dessert, because Nixon was giving the announcement of his resignation.

 

[HILL] Well, that was in the Watergate period. So, the assessment that you make of the first Nixon Presidency, 1969 to 1972 on, in terms of dealing with Vietnam, in terms of dealing with NATO, in terms of dealing with the Soviet Union and so on, and in terms of dealing with Canada and North American defence and so on, my impression is that the assessment you would make is a positive one.

 

[CAMERON] That is right. I could just add to that that Kissinger was such a powerful intellect that he tended to be somewhat arrogant in his personal relations. I can recall attending a NATO ministerial meeting, and he spent most of the first part of the meeting, some of which are pretty boring, as you know, reading the newspaper; then when it got around to his time to speak he did give a brilliant tour d'horizon of US interests, and then after he had finished, he got up and left. He did not even bother to hear what anyone else had to say. So he was not a popular Secretary of State in the sense of the friendly, jovial American. He was very, very, preoccupied with Kissinger and his own view of the world.

 

[HILL] If one goes then to the second Nixon presidency starting at the beginning of 1973, by then the US had largely disentangled itself from Vietnam. Now it was starting to move on promoting better East-West relations. I think there are two different interpretations I have heard of what happened in early 1973. One is that what the US was doing was laying the ground work for better relations with the Europeans and NATO as a basis for good consultations which would then lead into better relations with the Soviets. Another interpretation is that Nixon and Kissinger were off in pursuit of some New World Order, and to do this they were quite prepared to go over the heads of the other allies. I wondered if The Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, for example, was seen in the latter way. There was no prior consultation whatsoever on that, it was just announced to the other allies. That is my understanding. How would you assess that?

 

[CAMERON] I think that Kissinger always had that sort of world view. I do not know whether you can relate it from one period to the next, but my impression is the problem was not so much in terms of consultation with all the allies, but I think it was more a problem with the Germans. I think there were a good many indications that the West Germans were very nervous that the two big boys would get together and work out some agreement which would not take into account German interests. If you followed German post-war politics you would recall it is sort of traditional for a German Chancellor to make a visit to Washington at least once a year. I think during that period the Chancellor probably went twice or three times a year. If you look at the history of NATO you will probably see this concern developing periodically in waves. The concern usually develops when the US superpower gets too cozy, has too good relations with the Soviet Union. There is then the concern that there will be a sort of "divide up the world"; the Soviets will get out of Cuba, will not help the Cubans anymore, and the United States will do something in Europe, which would not necessarily benefit the Europeans, but it will be to the benefit of their overall world view. I do not know that this ever became a major issue but I think it was always in the background, and may have been perhaps more in the background in the second period than in the first. I think if there was evidence of a deliberate US effort to improve relations with the West Europeans, it was, in a sense, an attempt to ameliorate or to lessen their nervousness, particularly in the case of the Germans as to what they might be doing with the Soviets. There was always the worry that the two big guys might have similar problems with their little guys; if you look at it in simplistic terms, one big fellow may try to help the other big fellow by saying, well, I have my problems with the Greeks, and you have your problems with the Romanians. You do not know that goes on, but there is always the suspicion that a little bit of it takes place when the two superpowers get together. Another initiative during the Nixon presidency was their opening to China. I think Kissinger was always talking about playing the China card. The US assumption at the time was that if one wanted to get the Soviets really worried, the most effective way would be to suggest they would be confronted by a Chinese, Japanese, North Atlantic alliance.

 

[HILL] So you think there was something of that about it?

 

[CAMERON] I think there may have been a bit of excessive nervousness on the part of some members of NATO. But I do not think I can pinpoint any one event in particular.

 

[HILL] At that point Kissinger called for a New Atlantic Charter and also the Year of Europe, if you remember, in early 1973.

 

[CAMERON] That was a big balloon.

 

[HILL] The US was talking in terms of a united Europe as though it already existed—and if they could only get their act together then they would nicely fit into Kissinger's scheme of things.

 

[CAMERON] I do not recall that too clearly, but I do recall this Year of Europe was a grand fiasco. I do not think anything ever came of it, just a publicity stunt more than anything. I mean it sounded good, but I do not think anything ever developed.

 

[HILL] I am struck very much about your comment on Kissinger at the NATO Council meeting. I think this session was on the Year of Europe. I think he put this idea forward, but then nobody else really embraced it in quite the terms he wanted, so then he got fed up with it. Then, I think that Watergate was very important for US foreign policy. That started out already in the summer of '73.

 

Was that felt in that period in Ottawa? Did you sense the impact of Watergate very early on, do you recall?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, to the extent that, you know, the press here and television were forever reporting on what was going on south of the border, reporting on these hearings on Watergate. There was a good deal of unease about the situation, as it affected the leader of the Western Alliance. The evidence that was coming out was pretty damaging; it confirmed a lot of suspicions, but I guess, no one thought it had really gone that far. And it undermined the Administration’s credibility, inevitably.

 

[HILL] Was it your impression that it put a break on US policy-making? Did they get absorbed with it? Did Nixon get increasingly absorbed with it?

 

[CAMERON] At my level, I cannot recall it had much of an impact. There was always this sort of background concern about what was happening in the White House and what did it all mean, and how would they provide for the future if there were an impeachment, what would happen, and who would take over. The disarray in the Administration was really not unlike the feeling around here a few months ago, when things looked pretty bad in the White House and they fired all their people; there was something of the same kind of unease. But how much of an impact it had I do not recall.'

 

[HILL] While you were in this position in Ottawa, there were the 1973 energy crisis and the Middle East War. Now, that was a pretty traumatic experience for NATO. What was your impression of allied relationships in that period? There seemed to be quite a lot of acrimony over US shipments of supplies to Israel, and so on.

 

[CAMERON] The one issue that took place during that period which has been the subject of some discussion recently, was the question of whether the US air defence, as well as SAC forces, were put on alert in connection with their efforts to dramatize the seriousness of the situation, vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. My recollection is a little vague, but as I recall there had been some misunderstanding as to what the Americans did and to what extent it required consultation with Canada. I think they put their Strategic Air Command and their air defence forces under NORAD on a higher state of alert by way of underlining the seriousness with which they would view any Soviet move to monkey around in the Middle East at the time. If I remember well, there was an obligation on their part to consult us about that decision whereas we were just informed. But there was also some mix-up, as between informing our military branch, our Chief of Defence staff, and not informing the government; but that was not a major thing. We were also involved in negotiation of a peace-keeping arrangement for the Middle East. We worked closely with National Defence and the UN in devising a Canadian military contribution which would work jointly with Polish forces as part of the UN force. It was the first time an Eastern European country had sent peacekeeping forces and it was a bit of an experiment. I think it worked out reasonably well. It was not only unusual for a Warsaw Pact country to provide troops for peace-keeping, it was the first time a Western country had engaged in such a joint operation. So that took up a lot of our time in terms of what we did by way of our contribution to the settlement. But those are the two things that I can recall about that period, though not as dramatic events.

 

[HILL] My recollection of that is that there was not much in the way of Canadian - American dissension in that period. If you compare it to the Cuban missile crisis - Canada and the United States were in a lot of trouble over that issue. But 1973 was not like that, there was much more dissension between the Europeans and the Americans.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, I was going to say, the other thing that it brings back to mind is the extent to which the energy crisis dramatized the heavy, extreme dependence of the Europeans on the Middle East. And also, as I recall, I cannot remember whether it took place there, or later during the hostage operation, their reluctance to get involved militarily. The British, I think, were willing to do something. I think at one point our officials gave some thought to sending one of our destroyers from the Atlantic squadrons to go down into the Gulf if we were asked to do so.

 

[HILL] I have another point about this early 1973 period. I wonder how many Canadians really were analyzing in depth what Kissinger was doing, what his policy was, what his thinking was. How would you assess the Canadian ability to perceive what the United States is doing?

 

[CAMERON] I made that point at a recent meeting. I said that we assume that we know almost everything about the United States. We have all these groups looking at the Soviet Union, but I think we should spend more time assessing developments in the United States. I was four years in Washington and the thing that always impressed me was how they ever came to any decision. Their system is so complex; there are so many pressure groups and points of view that by the time they eventually get a decision, it is almost impossible to change it. I remember going to a meeting in NATO once on consultation, which is a Canadian preoccupation; we used to bore people by saying how we need to have more consultation in NATO. And at the meeting was Dean Rusk, who was then Secretary of State. Putting his notes aside he said to his NATO colleagues: "I know a lot of you feel that we should do more in the way of consultation; and I would be the first to admit that we should consult more. Our heart is in the right place, but I tell you what I would recommend that you do. You should instruct your Ambassador in Washington to keep his officers reading everything there is in the papers about what is going on in the US, in Washington. And as soon as they see something in the Washington Post for example is of interest to your country, they should go into the State Department and make their pitch. Because if you leave it too long until it gets farther up the ladder, there is nothing we can do about changing our point of view. It becomes, as they say, ’inconcrete'." I do not think many Canadians understand how the American system works. Because we have all these reporters down there, we have all the stuff on television, we think we know all there is to know about the United States. I think we need more analysis of what they do in Washington, and how they run things, not less. Because we have so much information and because we are North Americans, we tend to think that we are well placed to act as a mediator between the US and with the Europeans. The Europeans say "Thanks, but no thanks." Canadians tend to be almost over-confident about how well we understand the Americans; nobody else knows them better. I think we mislead ourselves very often.

 

[HILL] And I think that is not because of altruism. It is because we need to know that, in our own self interest, precisely because we do live next door to the United States, and what they do affects us.

 

[CAMERON] I am not sure that we are really wise in doing what I know this present Ambassador in Washington is doing. The Government seems to support it, that is a concerted effort to influence pressure groups in Congress. If we do that it is pretty hard for us to turn around and say Americans cannot do that here in Ottawa.

 

[HILL] Just one quick last question on the NATO, on that period. How would you generally assess the NATO consultations on things like the CSCE, and so on. How effective do you think they were?

 

[CAMERON] On CSCE?

 

[HILL] On things like that. Whatever was going on at that period.

 

[CAMERON] I guess I would say it varies from time to time, depending on what stage you are at. Sometimes people get bored to tears listening to these things, and it is difficult to get senior people and ministers to focus on things like MBFR. They just say, "Take it away, there are too many figures here, it's too complex". If it comes down to a political issue, that they can understand or comprehend clearly, then I would say, yes, there is probably good consultation at the higher level on that. But the problem often with those issues, is to try to make it meaningful for the senior people, including Under-Secretaries, however well- intentioned they may be. You only have so many hours in the day to deal with things, so I guess it has varied a lot. If the member countries feel that the issues are important enough to have a real impact, there probably will be fairly good consultation. I was the Canadian representative on the special consultative group in NATO on the INF negotiations. There was really good consultation there.

 

Part V - Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria, 1974-77

 

[HILL] I think what I would like to do now is to go on to Part Five. That was when you were Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. I think that was from 1974 to 1977, except that in Romania it ended in 1976.

 

[CAMERON] They got a new Embassy, a new Ambassador.

 

[HILL] I wonder if you could tell us briefly about your main impressions of that period particularly in terms of the differences of viewpoint in those different countries? Also, how astute do you think the policies of the Western allies are towards those countries?

 

[CAMERON] Well, each one is completely different. Yugoslavia has its own brand of Communism, involving a degree of self-management. They also consider themselves a world leader, in the non-aligned world. Tito was one of the founders of the Non-aligned Movement, and they place tremendous importance on that. They are very proud of their independence, they have good relations with virtually all, both the Western countries and most of the Eastern countries, but not all of them. They have a very active foreign policy, designed in part to remind the world of Yugoslavia's existence. The Yugoslav Ambassador spoke to our CIIA group a few months ago. He was interesting but we could not stop him talking, to the point where several people had to leave because it was getting late. They are vocal, articulate, intelligent people of different ethnic backgrounds and considering their size they play a pretty important role on the world scene. Romania appears as an independent actor on the foreign policy scene, but I think it is more smoke and mirrors. They have an agreement with the Soviets that they are allowed to sort of dance on the stage a little bit independently in return for keeping the toughest police state that exists in the Eastern Europe, with the exception of East Germany.

 

Romanians have a different outlook from most of the others. They are a Latin country, they speak a different language, they have a different background but they are very much dependent on the Communist system to keep Ceausescu’s crowd in power. Romania does not allow Soviet forces to go through its territory on the way to exercises in Bulgaria. So that reinforces the impression that they are independent. Bulgaria is a classic example of the loyal ally, certainly under Zhivkov. Bulgarians are very, very pro-Russian; their language is very similar, the statue on their main square is the statue of the uncle of George Ignatieff, who was the Foreign Minister at the time they were liberated from the Turks. They are very conscious of the Russian role in liberating them from Turkish domination, which is still remembered in that part of the world as a crucial point in their history. As to how the policies of the West apply, I would say the importance we attach to the CSCE is very relevant. Countries like Yugoslavia, and to some extent Romania, look on the CSCE as an avenue through which they can parley with the Western countries. When I was going to call on the Romanians, I would go down there about once a month and include a visit to the Bulgarians; we would always have at least a quarter of an hour on problems related to CSCE. This was particularly useful from our point of view, because we could legitimately raise the sensitive issue of family reunification. In fact, I remember my farewell call on the Romanian President. I gave him a list of the families who were not allowed to leave Romania to join their relatives in Canada. He did not take offense at this, or say this is intrusion in their national affairs. Romanians accepted this as part of their responsibility under the CSCE Final Act; they did not like it but they accepted it. That was one positive feature of our relationship with those countries. In Canada's case of course our main source of interest was Yugoslavia at that time. We had a fair amount of trade and quite a few visitors from Canada. The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Whelan, visited us in his official capacity and toured farms in Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. Western policies vary from state to state, but I think they have been intelligent in the sense that they have tried to maintain a dialogue with these countries which even in the cases of Romania or Bulgaria may help to promote a small degree of independence. Yugoslavia of course is different.

 

[HILL] After you finished serving in those countries, in 1977, you went to U.B.C. for a year. I just wanted to ask you one question on that period. That was between one phase of your career in Eastern Europe and the second phase. Were there any major reflections that you had in that period about that service, as you were preparing yourself for the next period.

 

[CAMERON] I was particularly interested in the extent to which there was a genuine effort made to produce a measure of detente and the role that was played by our embassies in those countries and their response to this effort to bring West and East together. We were pretty optimistic about what might happen on MBFR, and on CSCE and what would happen as a result of the SALT agreements and the efforts of the superpowers to get together. I think there was a general feeling of considerable optimism, almost until the imposition of martial law in 1980 in Poland.

 

[HILL] In some of my dealings with Eastern Europeans in the IPU, the Inter-parliamentary Union, I have detected what I believe to be some increase over time in their leeway for independent action. Would you assess that some East European countries have progressed over time in having a little bit more freedom of manoeuvre vis-a-vis the Soviet Union?

 

[CAMERON] Yes, but it varies from country to country. The East

Germans are one example. I used to go to Berlin about once a month when I was in Warsaw. They are the most stiff of the Germans. They are the old Prussians and very regimented by nature, not just because they have this kind of regime. But I was surprised at the extent to which they never let their hair down and told you what they really thought about anything. But they had a degree of interest in a lot of these questions of arms control and so on. It varies from country to country. Such was not the case with Bulgaria partly because of the way the Bulgarians are. Any change was partly a result of a change of the Soviet Union's manner of dealing with its allies. I think that several allies are going to have a real problem with Gorbachev in the sense that if they try to incorporate some of Gorbachev's ideas in their own countries they are going to have real problems, especially if they go too far.

 

[HILL] I gather that Pravda has been banned in the GDR. It's too left wing.

 

[CAMERON] You know if you try to put yourself in their position, you cannot help sympathizing with the East Germans. In East Berlin they call it the capital of the DDR, and they all have television sets, they tried to stop them from getting television sets for a while by making it illegal but of course that did not work. Nobody watches the East German television, except maybe for the odd bit of news. It is the most boring kind of crap they put out on that, and all they need to do is switch the dial and get all the European channels through West Berlin. And they watch, sometimes it is difficult - you get these jokes in East Berlin among some of the diplomats - it was difficult to get officials to go out on Thursday night. Why? Because they were going to be watching the latest US sit com shown on West German television. So they have this problem of trying to create a society with rigid, socialist morals and standards right up against the flesh pot of Europe, West Berlin. I do not know if you have been there recently, but there are more Mercedes and Cadillacs, you name it, luxury goods in the stores in West Berlin, plus all this flood of information. The East Germans are trying to establish, a Communist state in a country just about 200 miles wide. They have a real problem. They are all the time cracking down on this and that; it is difficult for them, it is almost an impossible task they have in controlling the information flowing from West Germany.

 

Part VI - Ambassador to Poland and the German Democratic Republic, 1978-80

 

[HILL] This leads us very nicely to what is Part 6 of the interview, which is your period as Ambassador in Poland and the GDR, and I think that I would like to continue a little bit with the GDR.' I was there once, I spent two weeks in a conference and prior to that I had been in West Berlin and my impression of the GDR was that fundamentally the people there remain German nationalists or Germans, and that nationalism is still an important feature there, that really the Marxist regime did not seem, to me, to have sunk really deep roots in the population. Now this may be just a surface impression, but how would you assess the development of the GDR and intra-German relations right now, or during the period when you were there?

 

[CAMERON] Well, my impressions for what they are worth, and again they are pretty superficial, because you do not learn all that much by being there three or four days once a month. But you learn a bit from talking to people who are there more permanently. My impression is that they are all Germans, they are very proud of the fact that they are Germans. They are also proud of the fact that they had built up their own country without any help from outside. The country was stripped by the Soviets and it has now become, they are proud of the fact that they are now number one, not number two or number three, they are number one in the Warsaw Pact, as the most efficient, best producer of goods and services. They provide the Soviets with a lot of highly specialized items; they have the famous old German optical firms, highly technical things, they have industrialized the country which was essentially an agricultural area before. Now it is the most polluted, the dirtiest place I have ever been in terms of air pollution. It would be like living next door to the Ohio Valley smoke stacks to be in East Germany. You hold your nose, it is just terrible. That is down where the industries are not in East Berlin, but farther south. There is a kind of ambivalence in the Germans. On the one hand they are German nationalists and therefore they see Germany as a German problem, but on the other hand there is a whole new generation that have been brought up who are East Germans. It starts in the way that they treat their athletes, from infants. Everything is organized and much attention is given to their youth. I do not think there is any sense among the younger people that the wave of the future is reunification with West Germany. My impression was, they are more proud of the fact that they have their own country. It is separated, they are Germans but separated from the other part of Germany; they have done it themselves and they have a degree of prosperity. They also believe their youth has certain kinds of benefits not available in West Germany. Evidence of the success of their youth programme is that their athletes are number one in the world. On the other side of the coin they have this repressive regime. But it is the one country in the East Bloc where the system, this Marxist/Leninist, Communist system, actually has been made to work. In addition to all the young people being brought up in the new tradition, you have a huge bureaucracy all of which have their own stake in the maintenance of the system. So I do not know. There are also more and more links between East and West Germany; they have also relaxed a lot, not with respect to travel for East Germans, but for people from the West. Commercial links between the two Germanies are very important. One of the reasons why East Germany has done so well is because it has an entry into the Common Market through West Germany; it certainly has been a big factor because a lot of the West German firms are closely tied to East German counterparts.

 

[HILL]    We might briefly touch on your period in Poland.

 

[CAMERON] This is a period which I would like to have explored in great depth because of all the interesting, fascinating things going on there.

 

[HILL] Your period in Poland and East Germany was from 1978 to 1980. Was Solidarity being felt already at this time in Poland or did that come some other time. The great upward surge of Solidarity was the early ’80s, was it not?

 

[CAMERON] Solidarity had not even been started and no one even heard about Walesa when we left. But there was a real mood developing on the part of the workers. You have to go back a few years; there were strikes in Poland in 1976 when the Government attempted to take action to put the economy on what you might call a more realistic footing. In Communist theology there is no such thing as inflation. They do not accept the idea of inflation. The net effect of this has been they have had, from way back, a situation where they subsidized the cost of basic commodities, bus fares, bread, milk, meat, a whole lot of things, so that, for example, the average Pole could go on the bus for the equivalent of one or two cents Canadian. Meat was equally cheap but in short supply. In 1976 they raised the price of meat I've forgotten by how much and they had strikes all over the place and they cracked down and they shot workers up in the shipyards in the north. One of the reasons there was trouble in the north was because a lot of the people up there hate the Soviets more than the rest of the Poles hate the Soviets. They are really tough characters around Gdansk. When I was leaving in 1980 I remember calling on the Speaker of their Parliament. I remember him telling me: "This summer we are going to try and introduce some economic reforms". Well the net effect of their policies was that you had an enormous proportion of the budget going into subsidies. The whole thing was cockeyed in terms of managing their economy. On top of that during the seventies, the banks were lending large amounts at low rates, including to the Poles. So they had an enormous build-up of debts and a lot of this money going to big projects including some Canadian projects, pulp and paper for example, huge amounts of money.

 

[HILL] Rapid industrialization.

 

[CAMERON] Rapid industrialization, which again is one of the objectives of these regimes; to be industrialized, that is the wave of the future. Poland used to be the bread basket of Europe. They used to export grain. Now we have people coming from the Wheat Board in Canada and looking at this country and saying "If we could take over here, we could really make this place go". When the Speaker was talking to me, and saying that they intended that summer to institute some reforms, what he meant was that they were going to raise the prices of some of these things so that they would not have to spend so much money paying for subsidies; and he said they were going to do it differently from the way they did it in 1976, when the last riots took place. The Speaker said "We are going to do it [institute reforms] on a region-by-region basis, not all at once, and we are going to do it in the summer". They tried it out first around Lublin. Not only did they have a big outcry because the fares went up on the trams, but the tram drivers also went on strike. Anyway, there was a strike by the tram drivers in Lublin which by itself was not very serious, but on top of that it spread. Because I guess the Poles got word this was going to happen everywhere and that the prices were going to go up. So the government had a minor crisis on its hands; on top of that, Poland had a miserable summer. It rained and rained; we left about July, but the Vistula had just about overflowed its banks by then; there was flooding and dark clouds and windy weather. The Poles are a bit like the Scandinavians, they love to see a little bit of sun because they have a lousy winter. Consequently, the reforms started off badly and the government did not handle the strike very well, and it spread up to the shipyards. Solidarity grew out of that. Essentially it was a sensible effort by the Government to deal with a very basic problem. So they had this combination of unrest as a result of their attempt to bring back a degree of common sense into the management of their economy, combined with a huge burden of foreign debt, plus an overly ambitious industrialization programme which started shortly before I arrived, with projects which would be difficult to implement in Canada, let alone in Poland. I remember we were invited to visit a paper mill up in the northern part of Poland. There was a desperate shortage of paper in Poland. So plans were made to build a large mill in North West Poland and it was designed by a Canadian engineering firm. Canada put up a lot of money and made it available for this project. Well, as Ambassador I was invited to come up and see the opening, I think it was going to be at Christmas in 1978/79. The plant manager phoned up to say sorry, it was not ready. The next spring came along, no sign of it and as it came closer to the summer of 1980 when I was expected to leave, a visit was finally arranged. During the visit we found that the plant was more than two years behind schedule. The Canadians there told us the main reasons for the delay were a combination of interference by the local Communist politicians, a lack of direction from Warsaw and the local government, and general mismanagement. If you talked to Germans about this kind of situation, they would just shake their heads. They think Poles are badly organized and not very good managers. Poles will tell you themselves they are good at ideas but they are not very good at carrying them out; it's sort of their national trait. The problem today is that the people do not have an adequate balanced supply of food. One Polish joke is what is a kilometre long and eats potatoes; the answer is a Polish meat line-up. And everybody works, women work, men work and often the women take turns as to who is going down on Thursdays or whatever day it is to get a little hunk of meat. It is really sad. What is the answer? Now they are talking about becoming a member of the International Monetary Fund. The Soviets have a strangle hold over them in the sense that they provide them with a lot of their energy: their oil and gas.

 

[HILL] Those people that you knew, who were in charge of the Government in that time, most of those presumably have gone now.

 

[CAMERON] The Foreign Minister is still around, he was in East Germany then.

 

[HILL] I mean that was the whole Gierek period.

 

[CAMERON] Yes, Gierek was blamed, that is pretty well true of any society; when they kick one government out people blame the previous one. Undoubtedly there was a lot of corruption, not nearly as much as you would find in a place like Romania where you had this entrenched autocracy. I do not know what the answer is in Poland. I think that hopefully an improvement in relations with the Soviet Union and between West and East might bring about amelioration in their condition; Solidarity to my mind was a natural reaction to a situation which had become unbearable. Not just in the question of being able to say anything but being able to have what they considered to be a fair standard of living. A lot of the people travel, and a lot of them come to Canada. They do not like the system, they do not think the system is much good. Their attitudes are more Western than Eastern. They do not have a great regard for the Soviets but they have a certain respect for them in the sense that the Soviets helped to liberate their country. Their attitude is one of ambivalence.

 

Part VII - Assistant Under-Secretarv of State. 1980-83

 

[HILL] I wonder if we could just quickly go over to the last part, Part VII, which is really the end of the interview. We turn to the point in 1980 when you came back to Ottawa. Until 1983 I think you were Assistant Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, part of that time with responsibility for the Bureau of International Security Policy and Arms Control. Well, this kind of links a bit to the previous comment, because one of the major issues in that period presumably was the whole business of Solidarity and introduction of martial law in Poland and so on. How would you assess Soviet behaviour in that crisis and also the Western responses to that situation?

 

[CAMERON] Well, the Soviets were in a very difficult position, because they had to deal with what was in essence not only an uprising but in a very strategic location. It is a very, very ^sensitive area of the world for them. They have large forces in East Germany, but the Polish lines of communication, the railways, go through Poland. There are not all that many forces in Poland, but there are a lot in East Germany. The Soviets were in a very serious, difficult situation, and my impression was that they really did not know quite what to do. I do not think that they wanted to invade Poland; I would doubt they ever intended to invade Poland if they could help it. There would have been no advantage gained in taking over Poland because the people are not sympathetic to Soviets, so it could have created an even worse situation. There might also have been some concern or nervousness about the loyalty of the Polish soldiers to the Polish Communist government. There is some evidence to support the theory that the ultimate weapon that they put to the Poles was a threat to cut off their energy supplies. They have such a strangle-hold economically, Poland is such a basket case anyway, that they could cut off their oil and gas, and they would just freeze to death in the winter time. Poland does not have any hydro electric power, just the generating stations, run on cheap coal but probably not enough to supply the country. They are dependent on the Soviets economically for so much, as well as their defence relationship. I think that the Soviet mobilization and movement on the borders was designed to impress upon the Poles, as much as upon the allies, their concern about what was going on in the country. In retrospect the imposition of martial law by the Polish Government came as a surprise to most intelligence analysts. They did not rate that highly on the list of possible developments, and the way it was handled was extremely skilful on the part of the Soviet and Polish authorities. Poles are very religious people, they go to Church every Sunday. Martial law was instituted on a Sunday morning, about two o'clock in the morning, when all good Poles were asleep or getting up to an early mass and it was carried out with a minimum of blood shed or Nazi-type police tactics. It was done without the use of the Armed Forces. I do not think that they wanted the Armed Forces to be the ones, and probably the people in the forces themselves did not want to be the ones to round up the Solidarity activists. This was done by the secret police. So the short answer is that the Soviets were very much in a dilemma as to what they could do; they had to do something for security reasons. The other big threat to the Soviets was that if they allowed this thing to get out of hand, and they already felt that it had gone too far, this could trigger enormous difficulties for the other Eastern countries as well as for the Soviet Union. Because it was a threat, not only a security threat, but a threat to their whole political system. The idea of plurality, of democracy just does not work. The two are just diametrically opposed. There is no way you could get the two to work together. The closest you get is something like you have in Yugoslavia.

 

[HILL] Another major issue that runs through the period while you were in this position in Ottawa is the question of the implementation of the NATO two-track decision of December 1979, about the installation of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe. How well do you think that whole affair was handled by NATO, by the NATO allies?

 

[CAMERON] There were mistakes made, but by and large my judgment would be that it was extremely well handled by the governments. The German government particularly, which was the most vulnerable one of all, put its future on the line and the Soviets badly miscalculated opinion in Germany. They thought the Government would not survive the vote on the introduction of missiles and they did everything they could; in fact their efforts to get involved in a propaganda war were counterproductive. There were a lot of mistakes but, by and large, there was good consultation with the allies, and a very active role was played by the Germans who had an extremely able negotiator by the name of Fred Ruth. Looking back, I would say it was a success. I do not think that Canada's attitude was particularly noteworthy; I am not very proud of it, but that is just a personal opinion.

 

[HILL] If you had to enumerate two or three other major developments in that period, when you were in this position, what would they be, I mean in respect to the general question of international peace and security? What stand out as key developments or achievements in that period?

 

[CAMERON] Well, there were the renewal of the SALT talks which were an important effort to reach an agreement on strategic weapons, and at the same time we came very close to reaching agreement with the Soviets on INF. Their "walk-in-the-woods" formula contained the seeds of an agreement. It always surprised me that the Soviets did not move in on that, and that we did not do a little bit more ourselves in trying to follow through. But the major mistake was made by the Soviets in terms of their analysis of the political situation in Germany. There has always been more political savvy involved in the Soviet negotiating position than there ever has been on the Western side; that has been a big Western weakness. We tend to look at arms controls in terms of numbers, in terms of what it is going to do in security terms. The Soviets have traditionally played as good chess players, they see it as a move ahead, they also see the political implications of all their moves, whether you call it propaganda or not.

 

[HILL] Well, as a last question, based on your reflections on that period, and leading up to today, how do you rate other questions?

 

[CAMERON] The other significant event was the follow-up to the Polish crisis and the way it was handled. I think that the imposition of martial law was a dramatic development in East-West relations. With respect to the reaction of the West, and especially the imposition of sanctions, they have had some political impact but they have been of doubtful value in terms of overall East-West relations. Another event that stands out in my mind was the discord in the Alliance over the question of the Siberian gas pipeline, and here Canada played a key role in that meeting which was held at La Sapiniere, north-east of Montreal. It was the first private meeting of NATO ministers ever held. There was no agenda and very few officials were present. It dealt with the question of a threat by the United States to retaliate against their allies because of European support for this pipeline.

 

It was a very serious Alliance crisis, and Canada played a very key role at the meeting which allowed the Americans to back down without publicity. The result was an agreement, which solved a potentially serious rift in the Alliance.

 

[HILL] One last question: how do you see NATO's role in Canadian foreign policy? Do you think it is a key element in Canadian foreign policy, particularly in terms of the pursuit of international peace and security? Do you remain a strong advocate of continuing membership?

 

[CAMERON] I remain a strong advocate of continuing membership. I believe it serves our interests. I do not think we should belong to it simply because it is a club that everybody should join. I agree with a good deal of what Joe Clark had to say recently about the advantages derived from being inside and not outside, lecturing piously to the others. Like any Alliance there are obligations and there are certain disadvantages, but in this inter-dependent world we live in nobody can really get along without closer relations with a multitude of countries. It seems to me that the important thing is that NATO should not become an alliance designed to confront forever the Soviet Union and its allies, that there should be an effort made to maintain a balance between defence and detente. If anything, the emphasis should be on negotiations with the East, on an effort to remove the divisions that exist, the political divisions which are at the heart of the arms build-up. To my mind, it is only by hard work and long negotiations and practical efforts through trade and closer relations that you are going to reduce this distrust that exists between East and West.

 

[HILL] Do you see NATO as being a fundamental basis for conducting those kind of discussions on an East-West basis?

 

[CAMERON] I would not be too rigid about that. It seems to me that you can envisage other broader types of systems. For example, I do not think you should downgrade, or I do not think that you should exaggerate either, what the CSCE has been able to accomplish. And I think you have to be fairly flexible. I think we have been fairly pragmatic ourselves, more so than some other countries, on the extent to which we are prepared to modify negotiating procedures.

 

[HILL] Basically, then, for the foreseeable future, how would you assess the utility of membership in NATO for Canada.

 

[CAMERON] Well, it will continue to be a very important element in our approach to East-West relations and in terms of our relations with our allies. Perhaps we should do more in the way of making clear, to our European partners particularly, the extent to which we have a big country here. We have a North American security problem, the dimensions of which are changing, and could well mean a greater emphasis on our Arctic and on the North than we have in the past. It has tended to fluctuate up and down. I do not think that the Europeans are sufficiently conscious of the extent of our North American security interests. It is not a question of being Canada first, it is the question of there being security dimensions to North America which are changing. And, it is part of the NATO Alliance after all; that is the point I would emphasize.

 

[HILL] We will close at this point. Thank you very much.