FOREIGN RELATIONS: Together

What is the role of allied foreign policy in relation to U.S. foreign policy? Allied nations can (and do) try to influence the making and changing of U.S. decisions. But can they soundly reject U.S. leadership outright?

For some time, U.S. policymakers have taken the position that on major questions of war and peace, duly discussed, the allied nations' only sense-making course is bound into the course set by the U.S. Some leaders in allied lands have received this position with bad grace, preferring to imply that their security does not necessarily depend on the U.S. Last week, ministers of two British Commonwealth nations left no doubt about their stand.

Speaking to Toronto's Canadian Club, Canadian External Affairs Secretary Lester Pearson observed: "Twice in this century Canada has been involved in a major war for periods of two years or more before our American neighbors came in. Today, I think that the neutrality of either of us ... would be unthinkable. That is a tremendous change, and one which must affect all our relations with the U.S. . . . Certain U.S. commitments, those, for instance, covering help to Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa and certain coastal islands, have not been accepted by us. But that is not saying that they may not involve us ... The fortunes of both our countries are interdependent. But the dependence of Canada on the U.S. is far greater than is the reverse. That is a fact which we must accept even if, at times, it makes us feel uncomfortable."

In Washington two days later, Australia's Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies added the endorsement of his 9,000,000 people down under to what Pearson had said. "The enemy is very astute," Menzies told the U.S. Senate, "to seize upon every point of difference among the governments of free countries, and magnify them. I believe that the points of difference . . . are trivial . . .If we were contemplating a great world war in defense of freedom, you would know, I would know, everyone in Great Britain would know, all around the free world we would know, that we would all be in it together."