The current military alliance between the United States and Canada has its origin in the interwar years. In 1938, then US president Franklin Roosevelt pledged that his nation “would not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil was threatened by any other empire.” His opposite number William King responded in kind:

We, too, have our obligations as a good friendly neighbor, and one of them is to see that . . .  our own country is made as immune from attack or possible invasion as we can reasonably be expected to make it, and that should the occasion ever arise, enemy forces should not be able to pursue their way either by land, sea, or air to the United States from Canadian territory.

In the years that followed, the two nations went on to strengthen their political and military ties, founding the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD) in 1940, the Military Cooperation Committee (MCC) in 1946, the North American Aerospace Defense Agreement and Command in 1958. It is, however, hard to shake the impression that within this alliance Canadian Force’s (CF) role is largely that of an appendage to their superpower southern neighbor.