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11/19/07

Canada's Role In NORAD Topic For SLU Professor's New Book

CANTON - In the 50 years since its creation, the focus of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has shifted from the threat of Soviet bombers to ballistic missiles to terrorist-highjacked aircraft. A new book by St. Lawrence University Professor of Canadian Studies Joseph T. Jockel looks at Canada's role in the bi-national command.

Canada in NORAD 1957-2007: A History was published in October by McGill-Queen's University Press.

At its creation in 1957, NORAD was given operational control over the vast U.S. and Canadian continental air defense forces. Jockel's book follows Canadian involvement in the organization, focusing particularly on what continental air defense has meant for the Canadian air force and for Canadian airspace and territory. It also examines the differing Canadian and U.S. conceptions of NORAD's role in warning of nuclear attack, and the implications of Ottawa's decisions not to participate in missile defense. In addition, Jockel details the place of Canadians within NORAD as it exercised operational control over Canadian and U.S. forces, which were equipped for years with nuclear air defense weapons, as well as the command's impact on Canadian sovereignty. Finally, it outlines what Ottawa sought to achieve in the NORAD agreements with Washington, from the first one in 1958 to the most recent.

A graduate of St. Lawrence University, Jockel has been a member of the faculty since 1980; he holds a master's degree from the University of Toronto and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Canadian Forces: Hard Choices, Soft Power (2001); Canada and International Peacekeeping (1994) and No Boundaries Upstairs: Canada, the United States, and the Origins of North American Air Defense, 1945-1958 (1987); and co-author of Canada and Collective Security: Odd Man Out (1986). He has been a Fulbright Fellow at the Royal Military College of Canada; an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations; a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington; a NATO Research Fellow; and a Senior Fellow of the Government of Canada's Canadian Studies Program in the U.S. Jockel is also a former president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States and is co-editor of the International Journal, the scholarly quarterly of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Toronto.

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