The North Atlantic Triangle and North Atlantic Treaty: a Canadian Perspective on the ABC Security Conversations of March-April 1948

This article examines the secret ‘security conversations’ between the United States, Britain and Canada that took place in Washington, DC, between 22 March and 1 April 1949. These ‘ABC’ talks produced a document known as the Pentagon Paper, which played an important part in the origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. For reasons of both foreign policy and domestic politics, the Pentagon Paper was portrayed at the time as essentially an American document but in fact it had been considerably influenced by Lester Pearson, representing Ottawa, as well as by Gladwyn Jebb and the British Foreign Office. The ABC security talks therefore provide an example of the significance of the North Atlantic Triangle in the immediate post-war period that witnessed the emergence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a response to Soviet Communism.