ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) decision from the standpoint of strategy and politics. The proposal to equip Maritime Command with SSNs highlights rather than alters the roles of Canada's navy in national and collective defense. Defense issues seldom figure highly in Canadian domestic politics and the merits or shortcomings of weapons systems for the Armed Forces are rarely matter of public debate. Overall, a new sea-launched cruise missile threat would again increase US concern about Canada's submarine surveillance capabilities and provide additional rationale for balancing the Canadian Anti-Submarine Warfare forces with SSNs of their own and placing more of them in the Pacific and Arctic. Canada is similarly linked by helping to monitor the approaches to the American nuclear-powered submarines bases, thereby contributing to the credibility of the sea-based strategic nuclear deterrent. The American-European transatlantic bargain appears though, to be on the threshold of evolutionary yet profound change prompted by concerns on both sides of the ocean.
