By contributing to the war in Ukraine, the Trudeau government is — perhaps unwittingly — marching us all down the road to Armageddon. .This is by no means hyperbole. Even the academics who rule the Doomsday Clock have set the dial at 90 seconds to midnight. We used to hear all about that clock during the height of the Cold War, when liberals thought President Ronald Reagan was going to start bombing Moscow. .But 90 seconds is closer than it's ever been. I have little patience for people — usually those with no defence experience or expertise — who insist this latest confrontation with Russia is the latest manifestation of Pax Americana and that NATO is doing its job to contain Russia. It’s 2023, not 1955, and Russia is not the Soviet Union and NATO is not the same organization. .I spent years peddling NATO’s talking points as a military public affairs officer — when these talking points were relevant. When I worked on Parliament Hill I produced a defence policy document, Canada Strong and Free, that underlined the salience of NATO in maintaining collective security and keeping the peace. NATO was relevant when NATO was containing communism. .NATO is not preventing a potential Third World War by containing Russia. It's fomenting a Third World War by creating the same conditions that provoked the First World War, a historical catastrophe that created the Bolshevik regime in Russia, destroyed the British Empire and planted the seeds of Nazism and the inevitable Second World War. .We are sleepwalking into a conflict with Russia — the most nuclear-armed country in the world — by thinking we can quietly and seamlessly arm Ukraine and wage a proxy war with Russia, and not expect it to retaliate. .The expansion of NATO to virtually every country in Europe is not just strategically inept. It is plain stupid. NATO’s rule the invasion of one member nation constitutes an invasion of all means Canada could be fighting over any military incursion of any member nation. Do you want to go to war over Albania? How about Estonia? Latvia? .It’s utter foolishness. .In 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration promised the dying Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward. This was vital for that country’s future security and the new Russian federation dissolved the Warsaw Pact in 1991 thinking that NATO was essentially a moribund military alliance. .There are some who are trying to suggest Bush wasn’t really serious about this commitment, but that really doesn’t matter either way — Russia believed then and believes now that the West was damn serious about it. By expanding NATO in this manner, the West perhaps ruined its chances to transform Russia into the truly democratic state it can and should be. God knows, the Russian people endured a communist revolution, Stalin’s murderous purges and Gulags and bore the brunt of the Second World War in the last century. They deserve better. .Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been seeking a mission.It has largely been effective in peacemaking efforts in Europe. I served in one of those missions to Bosnia in 1996.It has been grossly ineffective in attempting to humiliate Russia by further encirclement. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine proves that. .It may be true Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a violation of international law, immoral, brutal and worthy of serious condemnation. .But it is not worth a nuclear war. Austria’s invasion of Serbia and Germany ignoring Belgium neutrality in 1914 were also monstrous and unacceptable. But these incursions did not justify the Great War that murdered millions of soldiers who were surrounded by mud, shrapnel, dead bodies and corpulent rats in the trenches of the Western Front. .And we are no more making “the world safe for democracy” in Ukraine anymore than we were by fighting the First World War. Ukraine is a petulant republic ruled by rich oligarchs who are stealing our military and civil aid dollars. And I'm sick and tired of retired actor and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy running around to photo ops in his military active wear..How much has Canada contributed to this mess? Have a look at the timeline on the federal government’s own website. .We just sent two Leopard tanks. Don’t expect them to be coming back. There was the 200 APCs, worth $90 million. Then the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System that we are buying from the United States to give to Ukraine worth another $460 million. .We’ve also sent howitzers and an assortment of other military aid, including $1 billion in direct funding. .If you’ve any doubt that we are on the path to catastrophe, ask yourself this question: Has Trudeau ever been right about any of his abiding passions? .And he’s wrong about this one too.
