by Denis Smith
During my conversations with President Eisenhower I told him I had just started a letter to him in longhand when I received the telephone message with the request I come to Washington. He told me there will be communications sent to all world leaders but that there would be five or six letters he would write in longhand. They would be to:
The Queen,
Nehru
President of Mexico
Adenauer,
and myself.30
In fact, the president’s departing letter arrived typewritten, but it was nonetheless effusive. “As the moment approaches for me to relinquish the duties of my present office, my thoughts turn to the friendly association I have been privileged to have with you over these many months. Nothing has been closer to my heart than the hope that the two of us might, through our joint efforts, bring our two peoples to closer mutual understanding and friendship. I assure you that whatever failures can be charged to me in this regard were of the head, not the heart.”31
Vice President Nixon also sent a departing note of thanks for the prime minister’s friendship, which “went beyond the ordinary requirements of protocol.” He wished Diefenbaker well “as you continue to give inspiring leadership to the cause of peace and freedom in the world.”32
Diefenbaker was already drawing contrasts between the old regime and the new. After his one-day visit to Washington, he recorded a comment about his talks with Ambassador Heeney.
I discussed with him Dean Rusk and the conversation that he had with the new Secretary of State to be, who had expressed himself as one who wondered whether the special relationship between Ottawa and Washington could be continued without arousing suspicion or resentment on the part of the other close allies of the United States.
I took the view that this was an evidence of superciliousness or condescension towards Canada. He stated that it was not. He felt that the reason for the question was to ascertain what could be done to strengthen the relationship between our countries.33
The prime minister, Robinson told his diary, was “apprehensive, and seems to be almost relishing the more pessimistic omens.”34 When Kennedy delivered his state of the union address at the end of January, Diefenbaker noticed that the president had made no reference to Canada and “allowed himself an unseemly mutter that Prime Minister Nehru had been singled out for special tribute in the company of Churchill and de Gaulle.”35
Diefenbaker had not expected to visit the new president in the first few months of 1961. But when he heard that Harold Macmillan would be in Washington in April, he told parliament that he would be glad to see Macmillan in Ottawa and that he would like to go to Washington before the Commonwealth conference in March. A report from Heeney that Robert Menzies would be there on February 22 confirmed Diefenbaker’s desire to be received before that date. Heeney was instructed to arrange it, and within a few days a visit was negotiated for February 20.36
At his news conference on February 8, Kennedy announced that he would be meeting briefly with his “old friend” the prime minister, but he called him “Diefenbawker.”37 The prime minister acknowledged the invitation in the House of Commons, noting that “the president said this morning that it was a good thing internationally for old friends to get together.” But he was furious about Kennedy’s slip, and asked cabinet to consider an official protest. He was dissuaded, but the old slight rankled.38
Dean Rusk’s briefing paper on the visit prepared for President Kennedy began pointedly with an instruction that the prime minister’s name should be pronounced “Deefen-BAKER.” Rusk reflected that the United States faced “an evolving Canadian attitude of introspection and nationalism … a Canadian inferiority complex which is reflected in a sensitivity to any real or fancied slight to Canadian sovereignty. Thus the essential element in problems involving Canada tends to be psychological.” Despite its self-assertiveness, however, he believed that Canada would support the United States in vital matters of international policy. But Canadian support could not be taken for granted, and some Canadian initiatives would be “most annoying, but … not fundamentally damaging.” Most Canadians, he thought, were “favorably disposed toward the United States and believe that each country inescapably needs the other.”
He pointed out that the Diefenbaker government faced “serious political and economic difficulties” and trailed the Liberal Party by five points in the polls. “The Conservative Party is now motivated largely by a desire to bolster its waning popularity,” he reported, warning that the prime minister “will be strongly interested in anything which can add to his prestige. He may even suggest to you that anti-Americanism is so prevalent in Canada as to force him to employ nationalistic measures.” The paper warned of a series of potential points of conflict. Since the abandonment of the Arrow, the government had failed to work out its defence policy; the cabinet was split on the subject of nuclear weapons; the defence budget was stagnant; and it was possible that “a drift toward a kind of unconscious neutralism could develop with a concomitant loosening of defense ties with the United States.” The United States would have to “promote among Canadians a better understanding and an acceptance of the concept of full military interdependence.”
The briefing paper described Diefenbaker as “vigorous, self-confident, and a shrewd politician,” who was “not believed to have any basic prejudice against the United States.” He was tempted to assert Canadian independence, “but … only when it has been possible without overwhelmingly serious consequences to U.S.-Canadian relations.” Howard Green, on the other hand, was “less flexible and harder to deal with than the Prime Minister … leader of the more nationalistic element in the government … almost pacifist.” “He has exhibited … a naive and almost parochial approach to some international problems which was first attributed to his inexperience but which is now believed to be part of his basic personality.” Diefenbaker and his colleagues could be influenced by flattery: they were “favorably impressed when given friendly and intimate treatment by U.S. Government officials.”39
Diefenbaker’s briefings lacked any similar ventures into psychological analysis, but prepared him to discuss, among other things, the Canadian economy, the adverse trade balance with the United States, the state of negotiations over nuclear weapons, defence production sharing, Canada’s trade with Cuba, and UN disarmament talks.40 Above all, the meeting would be a test of the two leaders’ reactions to each other. Diefenbaker was the nervous partner in that encounter, and Kennedy the brash and confident newcomer revelling in his power.
On February 20 Diefenbaker and his party flew south to spend three hours at the White House, involving a brisk meeting with the president and a working lunch. Diefenbaker told the president that he faced pressures to increase Canadian protection against American imports and investment; that his government favoured trade with China and Cuba, except in strategic goods; and that he hoped there would be no interference under American foreign assets regulations with Imperial Oil’s sale of bunker fuel for ships carrying Canadian wheat to China. The president was sympathetic to this request, and the issue was later resolved. Diefenbaker told Kennedy that his cabinet had not yet made decisions on the acceptance of nuclear warheads or on American storage of nuclear weapons at its military bases in Canada. Those decisions, he said, would be influenced by American support for defence production sharing and by UN disarmament discussions. But Canada did wish to be ready for action, and would not limit itself to mere “birdwatching.” The two leaders agreed that negotiations for agreements on joint control under the British “double key” model should proceed. For Kennedy, this was confirmation of a Canadian commitment; for Diefenbaker, it was an assertion of equality and a promise of time. Diefenbaker told Robinson the next day that there would be no agreement “while disarmament was being pressed forward but all the preliminaries would be completed so that there would be no holdup should the need arise.”41
During their break for lunch, Kennedy sparred facetiously with Diefenbaker, pointing out
a stuffed sailfish he had caught on his honeymoon. “Have you ever caught anything better?” he challenged. Diefenbaker boasted that only a month before, in Jamaica, he had landed a 140-pound marlin in a tiring, three-hour engagement. Kennedy mocked him: “You didn’t catch it!” When Diefenbaker examined the paintings in the Oval Office, he noticed several of American naval victories in the War of 1812, but none of British triumphs. Kennedy knew of no such victories. Diefenbaker told him of the capture of the American ship Chesapeake by the British frigate Shannon, and its internment in Halifax. “If I had that picture,” Kennedy said, “I would put it up.” The prime minister undertook to find one, and later directed the national librarian, Kaye Lamb, to search the galleries and print shops for the evidence. Eventually a print of bloody slaughter was located in New York and delivered to the prime minister.42 As the visit ended, Kennedy took Diefenbaker on a jaunt for the photographers in the White House garden.
Diefenbaker was pleased by this first encounter. On the drive to the airport he told Heeney that Kennedy had “great capacity, a far-sighted judgment on international affairs, and an attractive human quality in private exchanges.” By late afternoon the prime minister was back in Ottawa reporting on the meeting to the House of Commons. The meeting, he said, “was a revealing and exhilarating experience. The President … has the kind of personality that leaves upon one the impression of a person dedicated to peace, to the raising of economic standards not only in his own country but in all countries, and to the achievement in his day of disarmament among all the nations of the world.” Diefenbaker’s fears had been calmed. The prime minister told the House that Kennedy had accepted his invitation to visit Ottawa later in the spring, and the date was soon confirmed for mid-May.43
Kennedy responded differently to the meeting. The president told his resident historian, Arthur Schlesinger, that Diefenbaker was insincere and untrustworthy; to his brother Robert, he said, “I don’t want to see that boring son of a bitch again.” A friend of Kennedy’s remarked to Knowlton Nash: “You could kick him. You could rob him. But you must never bore him.”44
At Diefenbaker’s urging, Macmillan came to Ottawa after his first visit to Kennedy in April and reported enthusiastically on his impressions. Kennedy was “more sensitive, more politically minded,” more flexible than Eisenhower. Britain would do nothing to complicate his life during the early months of his term. Macmillan’s enthusiasm triggered Diefenbaker’s envy, and he responded peevishly. “Macmillan scarcely concealed his irritation at P.M.’s negative position,” Robinson noted.45
A week later, on April 17, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion was launched and quickly collapsed in the absence of US air support or a local uprising. Diefenbaker’s readiness to find fault with Kennedy was aroused, but the issues, as Robinson recalled, tore at his divided instincts: “outright suspicion of the (communist) regime in Cuba, the feeling that ‘a stand’ should be taken against it, on the one hand; and on the other, an acute concern that Canadian support for a risky American-sponsored enterprise should not be taken for granted.” Diefenbaker asked for a draft statement for use in the House, and found the department’s text “wishy-washy, soft, conciliatory.” He told Robinson that the department’s policy of appeasement “would simply postpone the destruction of the world.” Robinson, exasperated by yet another display of the prime minister’s perversity, replied that “he would surely not wish us to advance it.” The statement that emerged on April 19 was harsher than the department had advised, and was read in Washington as Canadian support for American policy. When the prime minister heard that, he protested and asked for a further draft that would make clear the limits of Canadian support. But Green and Diefenbaker disagreed over the text, and the clarification never appeared.46
As Kennedy’s visit approached, Diefenbaker involved himself in every detail of the complex arrangements. At the National Gallery, a nude sculpture was tastefully draped for Jackie Kennedy’s tour. That was a simple matter, but “waves of indignation and anger” swept over Diefenbaker as he observed plans for the intrusions of American secret service agents guarding the president, even into the House of Commons, where Kennedy would address a joint session of parliament. “They want to put men with guns up all over the place!” Diefenbaker told his secretary, Bunny Pound. “They’re not going to shove me around!” Robinson judged that these reactions affected Diefenbaker’s concentration on the substance of his briefings and his general attitude to the visit. “And who,” the normally sceptical foreign service officer wrote, “could blame him?”47
Diefenbaker’s briefings involved preparations to discuss Soviet-American conflict over Berlin and Laos, the aftermath of the Cuban crisis, NATO, Britain and the Common Market, foreign aid, nuclear testing and disarmament, and the long-emerging triangular deal for Canadian interceptor aircraft and US mutual aid purchases of aircraft in Canada. Before he departed overseas for conferences on May 9, Green emphasized to Diefenbaker that there should be no custody and control agreement for accepting nuclear weapons in Canada as long as disarmament discussions were proceeding. That position now reflected angry conflict between the Department of Defence under Douglas Harkness - who wanted quick agreement on warheads - and External Affairs under Howard Green and the undersecretary, Norman Robertson. As a result, no negotiation had followed the Washington meeting in February.48
The Americans, in full awareness of this difference, applied their wiles in the diplomatic campaign. They would try to bypass Howard Green. On May 11 the American ambassador, Livingston Merchant, met privately with Diefenbaker to make specific proposals for the three-way swap agreement, which would involve delivery of sixty-six F-101Bs to Canada, Canadian assumption of control over sixteen Pinetree radar stations, and a $200 million US mutual aid order for F-104Gs for European NATO forces with Canadair Limited. The bite was in the tail: the F101s would come armed with nuclear weapons, and that would open the door to a wider agreement.
Diefenbaker told Merchant that he understood American wishes, but had “genuine concern” about Canadian opinion, on two grounds. First, there were strong divisions among the public - and not all the opponents were “communists and bums.” Second, the Department of External Affairs was “riddled with wishful thinkers who believed the Soviets would be propitiated and disarmament prospects improved if only Canada did nothing to provoke the Soviet Union such as accepting nuclear armaments.” Diefenbaker said that this was a “ridiculous” view, and that cabinet would have to reach a decision quickly. He would take it up shortly with his ministers, and, in the interim, he told Merchant not to raise the question with External Affairs. Merchant reported to Washington, “I am certain we have a strong ally in Prime Minister as well as in Harkness.”49
Diefenbaker did not take the issue to cabinet, but discussed it twice with Robert Bryce and decided that a swap deal could not include nuclear warheads. He was not prepared to override Green in his absence, or to confront the public opponents of nuclear warheads.50
Meanwhile, Howard Green provoked a diplomatic flurry by remarking to reporters on his overseas flight that Canada would be ready to mediate the dispute between the United States and Cuba. The State Department expressed its concern to Arnold Heeney, and on the eve of Kennedy’s departure for Ottawa Dean Rusk sent an “eyes only” message to the president about the increasingly awkward Canadian minister. Rusk suggested that Kennedy should “have frank talk with prime minister … about neutralist tendencies Canadian policy especially as presented by … Green.” He cited three recent examples. First, at the NATO ministers’ meeting just concluded, Green had favoured the reduction of tensions between the “two nuclear giants.” He had thus “seemed to join the long parade of those who have wished to provide a bridge, meaning continuous concessions on our part to an insatiable power determined to pursue its world revolution by every available means.” Second, Green’s offer of Cuban mediation had distorted a general problem into a “bilateral US-Cuban affair.” When Rusk raised the issue with Green in G
eneva, “he replied lamely that what he intended to say was that if he were asked to mediate he would be glad to do so.” Third, Green had refused to participate in caucus discussions among the United States, the United Kingdom, and France over Laos in Geneva on the ground that Canada was a neutral member of the International Control Commission. All this worried Rusk.
I would not suggest that president personify discussion by involving Green by name but rather press prime minister on general attitude Canada on questions directly affecting free world. Green is obviously bemused by great peace-making role which Canada (obviously usefully) plays in such situations as Suez, Congo and other affairs … Be it said, Green’s point of view seems to be supported by considerable amount of Canadian public opinion. Suggest Merchant brief president this situation prior conversation [with] prime minister.51
The auguries looked troublesome on both sides as Kennedy left Washington for Ottawa on the afternoon of May 16. Kennedy was, as usual, well fortified with chemical injections to control his multiple physical ailments. Before returning home, he would have to call for more painkillers.52
On his arrival at Uplands airport, Kennedy made two gaffes, at least one of them deliberate. Despite fresh briefing, he persisted in mispronouncing the prime minister’s name; and he commented lightly that he dared to venture into the French language after hearing the prime minister’s efforts in his introduction. The crowd laughed; Diefenbaker was not amused.