Is Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland vying for the top job at NATO? The very fact she’s not denying her wanting the secretary general position is reason enough to believe she is looking for a career move. So our loss could very well be NATO’s loss..If she does want to move on, it clearly has much to do with Prime Minister Trudeau’s declaration this week that he’s staying on as leader for the next election. In other words, he’s daring the caucus to eject him. Clearly, Freeland is not up for that fight. But she is astute enough to realize that with Trudeau at the helm, the Liberal Party is destined to go down to defeat in the next election, whether it comes this fall or in another two years. Trudeau’s astounding luck and Teflon exterior is wearing extremely thin..Ms. Freeland has made much political hay out of her hotel lobby altercation. In interview after interview, and looking as pained as possible, she begged Canadians for the civil political discourse that she never quite managed to offer herself, as she froze the bank accounts of those who dared support the Freedom Convoy with financial donations. At NATO, she would get the respect she’s sure she merits. After all, she’s been sending money to Ukraine at lightning speed, with absolutely no assurance that the funding is actually going to fight the war against Russia and not being used to fill the pockets of that country’s corrupt oligarchs..But it is really an opportune moment to question just what the hell has happened to NATO. Arguably it was once the most successful organ of collective security: Now it has become increasingly guilty of destabilizing Europe, as it continues to expand to the level of parody. Yes, NATO won the Cold War with iron resolve and all that John Foster Dulles talk of "agonizing reappraisal" and "massive retaliation" when he was President Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of state. But it is fast outliving any efficacy in this fractured world of an emboldened China and a pusillanimous United States..With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Warsaw Pact, NATO should have become redundant. But, para-government organizations rarely ever envision their own obsolescence. They simply redefine their roles and missions in a changing world. So NATO decided to become a sort of European police force that intervened in places like Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. That was fine: I once served with a NATO force in Bosnia that effectively managed a civil war, that could have become a massive humanitarian crisis..But NATO continued to expand right to the Russian border. And that’s where things went awry. Because every country on Europe cannot and should not become a member of NATO because with every country that joints, the risk of war increases. Does the West really want to go to war if the borders of any European country is violated? Do we really want to risk a nuclear confrontation with Russia over every issue of European sovereignty? Clearly, there hasn’t been sufficient strategic thinking occurring at NATO but instead, a great deal of self-preservation..To say that we will support Ukraine in its war against Russia forever is as absolutely ridiculous, as the three years of trench warfare that characterized the Great War and devoured millions of lives for absolutely no gain or purpose..Of course, if we send Freeland to NATO, the organization will be getting a large dose of the status quo and a dedicated warmonger who believes in endless wars all around the world — especially if other people have to die in them. But Freeland is a career politician who is crafty and intelligent and amoral enough to know when it is time to transition from the national to international scene..She could not have chosen a more opportune time.
