Continuing the war in Ukraine is not a viable foreign policy for Canada or NATO

Commentary

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares for this week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, he should speak wisely.

Amid all the tense and fabricated hoopla surrounding Trudeau’s “surprise visit” to Ukraine in June, almost all the media missed one key moment: Canada became “guarantor” of Ukraine’s security. And those media outlets that did catch the statement are certainly missing the point. What does this really mean? How can Canada guarantee the safety of Ukraine when it is at war with Russia? Should Canada, and thus all of NATO, declare war on Russia to fulfill this commitment? Wouldn’t that effectively put all of NATO at war with Russia? Yes it would.

But this guarantee statement is sheer madness. NATO moves closer to war with Russia every day as it continues to arm Ukraine and it seems inevitable that it seems destined to put forces on the ground to go head-to-head.

So while Ottawa is pushing Canada and NATO into a corner with Russia with its left hand, it continues to refuse to be a team player with the alliance and spend 2 percent of Canada’s GDP on national defense with its right hand. Trudeau has even admitted that Canada will probably never reach that magic number.

Canada has not just sent money, it has sent equipment such as Leopard tanks and the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System. The Canadian military doesn’t even have this in their arsenal and probably never will. The tanks and armored vehicles are, of course, simply sent to a Russian shooting gallery that wipes out all the military hardware NATO supplies and decimates the male population used as cannon fodder.

Canada’s own army is not getting the support it needs. Military personnel sent to Latvia are required buy their own helmets because the supply chain is so inadequate and people in Poland had to buy their own meals without any promise of timely compensation.

You may find reason to applaud the Liberals for purchasing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for the Royal Canadian Air Force, as I did. But Justin Trudeau, like his father, plays the defense game, only agreeing to buy the necessary military acquisitions when necessary to maintain Canada’s military credibility with our allies – read NATO. Pierre Trudeau waited until the last possible moment to buy the CF-18 Hornet and CP-140 Aurora.

It is wise that the Liberal government opposes Washington’s decision to give cluster bombs to Ukraine – but what else could it do, given that it has banned this notorious munitions of war and has actively campaigned for its eradication across the whole world?

Building on Lloyd Axworthy’s pioneering work on the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, Canada pushed for the adoption of the Cluster Munitions Convention, which has now been ratified by more than 100 countries. statement from the federal government is reading. “We do not support the use of cluster munitions and are committed to ending the effects cluster munitions have on civilians, especially children.”

That the Biden administration is sending cluster bombs to Ukraine is just more evidence that its confused defense policy is either thoughtless or designed to provoke nuclear war with Russia.

Canada’s opposition certainly won’t spell the end of NATO, but it could be the beginning of the end of a united front against Ukraine. US President Joe Biden has never had a clear plan about the war in Ukraine. He has shunned peace talks and insisted that America and NATO will be with Ukraine to the end – but what if that end is nuclear war with Russia?

While the US continues to play the game with the Russians, there is increasing unrest in Europe, where the nuclear missiles would land first.

The war in Ukraine must end and NATO must stop supporting it. This war is killing Ukrainians at a terrifying rate, and the only people benefiting from the ongoing conflict are the Military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower had the courage and perseverance to identify himself as a primary threat to world peace when he left the White House in 1961. The war is destroying the people of Ukraine and with it its ability to remain a nation-state.

Ukraine has no business as a member of NATO. It may still remain a sovereign state, perhaps losing some of its eastern territory heavily populated by Russians. But it cannot be a nation that sits alongside Russia and is part of a military alliance now almost exclusively focused on Russia. Thinking otherwise is madness.

The collapse of the Soviet Union would coincide with the winding down of NATO. That didn’t happen. Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and expected the West to do the same. Instead, NATO started looking for a new mission and virtually every country in Europe started signing.

The bigger the NATO club gets, the more likely it is to fuel an international conflict that no one wants. Do you want to go to war over Lithuania? Do you want a nuclear war with Russia because Ukraine must join the alliance?

Continuing this war is not a viable foreign policy for Canada or for NATO.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.