ABSTRACT
In giving Canada’s official reaction to the invasion of Panama by the United States, Joe Clark, then Secretary of State for External Affairs in the Mulroney government, ‘regretted the American action’, perceiving the event as a ‘dangerous precedent’.2 After all, Clark was the man who had forcefully defended Canadian sovereignty when the American icebreaker Polar Sea ‘invaded’ Canadian waters by transiting the Northwest Passage during the summer of 1985.3 From this perspective, one might say that the message was consistent. However, in his February 1990 Toronto address, Clark toned down his response by adding that he ‘understood’ the reasons ‘why the US felt compelled to do what it did’.4 In other words, the Canadian government supported the object of the American intervention, but expressed some reservations about the means used to reach the goal.
