NEW BOOK BY ALAN BARNES
Alan Barnes, a veteran of the Canadian Intelligence Enterprise (CIE), has just published a book dealing dealing with Canadian intelligence assessments in the early Cold War. It is available from UBC Press or Amazon.ca
CIN/RCR members can get the book at a discount, from UBC Press, using discount code 1662-40. This is good for a 40% discount on the hardcopy and e-book versions currently available on the UBC Press website and will be active until 25 November. Unfortunately, the paperback version of the book will not be available until spring 2026.
Watching the Bear: Canadian Intelligence Assessments of the Soviet Threat to North America, 1946-64.
As the Soviet threat to North America evolved in the early Cold War, the world was watching. What was the view from Ottawa? The role that intelligence played in Canadian foreign policy and defence decisions has been largely ignored to date. Watching the Bear begins to tell that story. Alan Barnes, a twenty-five-year veteran of the Canadian intelligence community, draws on recently declassified archival sources to offer a wholly new perspective on Canada’s policies for the defence of North America from 1946 to 1964.
After the Second World War, Canada created an independent capacity to produce strategic intelligence assessments, and Canadian analysts worked with their American counterparts to prepare joint appraisals of the looming Soviet menace to the continent. The fact that Canadian conclusions often differed in important ways from American views at times complicated relations with Washington. Canada’s success in negotiating these tensions was instrumental in ensuring that the two countries developed a common basis for defence planning.
By bringing little-known intelligence documentation to light and assessing the accuracy of Western conclusions about Soviet capabilities, Watching the Bear makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of Canadian intelligence, defence, and foreign relations.
This deep, unparalleled exploration of the historical record on Canadian postwar intelligence will be invaluable to researchers in Canadian foreign and defence studies, as well as to practitioners in and scholars of the Canadian intelligence community, and to general readers interested in Canadian intelligence and military history.
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