41. Позиція Канади щодо війни в Індокитаї.

The next big issue of contention was the war in Vietnam. The United States had solidly supported South Vietnam against the communist North since 1954, but during the 1960s it became more deeply embroiled in this impossible quagmire. For its part, Canada had been active in Southeast Asia since 1954, when it was appointed to the International Control Commission (ICC) for Vietnam. Meant to supervise a non-existent peace, the ICC performed a thankless task. It was particularly galling for Canadians who served on the ICC, because of the blatantly pro-communist bias of Poland and the similar, though more subtle, attitude of India, the other members of the Commission.

Most Canadian delegates reacted by increasingly taking the side of South Vietnam in disputes. In the spring of 1964, Ottawa agreed to allow the United States to use the senior Canadian representative on the Commission, Blair Seaborn, to inform North Vietnam of the dangers of provoking Washington and the benefits of a negotiated peace. Seaborn's mission was a failure because neither Washington nor Hanoi was ready to talk.

In early 1965, the war was expanded with the start of an extensive U.S. bombing campaign. As the war escalated, Pearson became increasingly doubtful of the wisdom of U.S. policy. In April 1965, he called for a halt in air strikes against North Vietnam while speaking in Philadelphia. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had succeeded the assassinated Kennedy in 1963, was infuriated, not only by the content of the speech but by the fact that it had been delivered in the United States. At a subsequent meeting, he berated Pearson mercilessly, at one point grabbing him by the lapel, to the consternation of the Canadian ambassador in Washington, who witnessed this extraordinary scene.

Alarmed that Johnson's decision to send U.S. ground troops to Vietnam might lead to a wider war in Asia, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Paul Martin, decided to make an independent approach to the North by sending Chester Ronning, Canada's leading China expert, as an emissary. The Americans were not pleased, because they had their own secret lines of communication to the North. Ronning's two missions accomplished nothing.

Through 1966 and 1967, the government became more critical of the United States, reflecting both Pearson's own convictions and the growing anti-war sentiment of Canadian public opinion. Although Canada continued to urge the United States to negotiate, the government was really in no position to be self-righteous. Opposition to the war did not prevent Canada from selling billions of dollars' worth of war material to the United States. For anti-war protesters in Canada, there was more than a whiff of hypocrisy to Canadian policy.