Date of Completion

2025

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

History

Thesis Type

Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors

First Advisor

Andrew Buchanan

Keywords

Cold War, sovereignty, Arctic, environmentalism, hegemony

Abstract

As the Second World War came to a close and tensions rose between the Soviet Union and the United States, the destructive capabilities of the air age became clear when, in reflection of the technologic capabilities of the air age, cartographic representations of the globe used a circumpolar orientation to position the North Pole as the center of global strategic power. Geography no longer ensured US security – Moscow could launch attacks over the Arctic to reach centers of industry and population in the lower 48 states. These realizations resulted in a number of joint US-Canadian operations in the Canadian Arctic to ensure continental security. This work utilizes the history of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line project, a chain of radar networks that stretched across North America’s 69th parallel, to emphasize Washington’s postwar hemispheric hegemony through the invasion of Canadian sovereignty. In addition to examining how the phases of the DEW Line’s construction and operation aggravated Canadian-American relations, an environmental lens that investigates the ecological consequences of the project’s abandonment in the early 1960s reveals a concrete violation of Canadian sovereignty by Washington. Using a wide range of sources, including diplomatic correspondences, newspaper articles, intergovernmental debates, and even crossing disciplines to integrate scientific studies, this work provides a new framework to emphasize the hemispheric hegemony held by Washington in the postwar period.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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