When the USSR disintegrated in 1989, NATO lost its raison d’être. NATO had been a military alliance whose mission was the defence of the Western world from Soviet aggression. It had been established in 1949. The Canadian government had been involved in its creation with no input from, nor consultation with, the Canadian people. At the time, few Canadians were aware of the existence of NATO or of Canada’s participation. International affairs were not the business of citizens in the free world. Democracy was limited to the domestic affairs of the nation state. However, it need not be so. And, I will argue, it must not be so.
When the USSR collapsed, Ukraine was in a privileged position to play both sides of the Cold War divide. With close economic ties to Russia, a developed industrial sector, food security, and grain exports, Ukraine could have thrived. With the end of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the constant threat of war would have been eliminated.
However, inexplicably for those who believed that NATO had been a defensive organization, the military arm of the Western capitalist countries continued to expand against the threat of an enemy that no longer existed. It was clear that Washington would not let its enemy go. At the time, there were deliberations among the members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and other think tanks on how to justify NATO’s continued existence. The idea of allowing it to dismember, as had the Warsaw Pact when the USSR broke apart, was not an option. I remember a Canadian general floating the suggestion that, perhaps, terrorism could replace the USSR as a viable enemy and keep NATO in business indefinitely. It seemed silly at the time.
Instead, NATO expanded, subsuming almost all of the old Soviet republics until it was right at Russia’s border. Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia remained the only non-allied countries between NATO and Russia. Remember, NATO is a military organization. It’s not a horticultural society. Imagine that the Berlin Wall had fallen the other way and the USSR absorbed all European countries into the Warsaw Pact. And, then, it schemed to incorporate Canada and Mexico. It might have weakened Canada by fomenting ill will between English and French Canadians. How would Washington have responded to such a threat on its borders?
Washington and the NATO alliance would not let Russia go as an enemy. When Putin assumed the presidency of Russia in 2000, he asked outgoing American President Bill Clinton whether NATO would consider Russia’s application to join the alliance. No. NATO wanted Russia as an enemy. Remember back in grade five, hearing this kind of sentiment: “I’m having a party and everyone’s invited … except Mary.” NATO has its notorious chapter five, whereby an attack on one member is an attack on all, and requires that all member states come to the defence of the victim. But remember, NATO articles do not have the force of international law. NATO is a club.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO strategy has been to isolate Russia and keep it from challenging American hegemony. It also keeps defence spending elevated against constant declared threats. It was called into action for war in Afghanistan, for instance, when it was claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an act of war.
In preparation for war, America and its allies activate and exacerbate the internal divisions of the target nation. In the case of Ukraine, the most vulnerable division is ethnic/linguistic. Ethnic Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. The country is almost evenly divided between ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians. And so, true to form, the West has done all in its power to seduce the ethnic Ukrainians to identify as European and aspire to political and economic union with Europe. Dangerously, America and Europe have lured ethnic Ukrainians with membership in NATO. That means a military alliance against Russia. How could this possibly have nurtured goodwill inside Ukraine? How were the ethnic Russians supposed to respond to such an offer? It was a cynical ploy by the sociopaths who determine American foreign policy.
The ethnic Ukrainian nationalists have been instrumentalized against the ethnic Russians. Since 2014, the ethnic Ukrainians have been supported by the Americans and Europeans to purge the ethnic Russians from their midst to arrive at a more pure nation. Included among the ethnic Ukrainians are the adherents to Nazi master-race ideology. They are proud of it. And the West knew exactly whom they were militarizing against Russia. First, let’s make it clear that there are avowed neo-Nazi groups that hold central positions in the military and police forces of Ukraine. Since 2014, Ukrainian ultranationalists have continuously shelled the ethnic Russians in the Donbass as has been well documented by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.
Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal have documented the extent and importance of neo-Nazi groups in Ukrainian politics in their detailed article “How Zelensky Made Peace with Neo-Nazis.” I will not attempt to duplicate their good work here. Others have documented the same thing.
Some claim that they are marginal in ethnic Ukrainian society. But there is much evidence that neo-Nazis are deeply rooted and have been very active since 2014. There are several videos that document rallies in which crowds of thousands of ethnic Ukrainians call for the national cleansing of ethnic Russians. (I’m assuming the translations are accurate.) There is a common ritual in which a leader of the rally calls for everyone who is not Russian to jump. The crowd responds by jumping enthusiastically. The barker yells that everybody who is not jumping is Russian. It makes my blood run cold. Talk about mass formation. The point I need to make is that the thousands of rally-goers jump with glee. They identify proudly as not-Russian and threaten any ethnic Russian in their midst or in the country. There is a continuum that moves from ethnic-Ukrainian neo-Nazis to ethnic-Ukrainian nationalists. Maybe everyone who jumps at the rallies is not an avowed neo-Nazi, but neither are they democratic egalitarians.
They scare me because they reflect my own society back to me. Around me here in Toronto are people who fall into line with the media-cartel narrative. This is after two years of absurd contradictions and irrational mandates based on anti-scientific claims about SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, PCR “tests,” face-coverings, social distancing, and so on. Now, those same people whom I encounter on a daily basis have fallen right into line regarding the government and media narrative regarding evil Putin, poor Ukraine, and the benevolent West. The media has told people to jump, and they are all jumping. I have roots in English and French Canada. Yesterday, I got a phone call from a longtime French-speaking friend in Montreal. She’s a nice person, born yesterday as far as geopolitics go. She was distraught that Putin had invaded and was killing all the Ukrainians. “Oh, mon Dieu, les mères avec leurs enfants! C’est désolant,” she whimpered. She feared for us all, “What if Putin decides to invade Canada, with all our resources and our northern expanses so vulnerable?” Then there is the human companion of my dog’s friend whom we often encounter on our walks. She’s helping to collect fleece for the poor Ukrainians, victim of Putin’s aggression. “Imagine that you’re going about your life and, all of a sudden one day, your country is under attack from a maniac and you have to flee for your life.” These kinds of sentiments are all around, not least in my family whose facts also come from the media cartel: “Putin is planning on conquering the world, just like Hitler.” Anything else is not a fact in evidence. I feel like everybody around me is jumping in unison, saying, “Anyone who isn’t jumping is an enemy.”
Many of we Canadians have had a visceral experience over the last two years that our government is, not only untrustworthy but, inimical to our well being. All levels of government in Canada are acting in violation of the constitution. They are all rogue. So, what have they been doing in Ukraine?
In Maidan, in the centre of Kiev, in February 2014, the ethnic Ukrainians protested the government. President Yanukovych was carrying out his policy of rapprochement with Russia. He had been elected democratically on just such a platform. But the ethnic Ukrainians were unhappy. What were their actual grievances? As the protest intensified in February of 2014, politicians from the United States and Europe arrived to lend their support to the crowd whose main grievance seemed to be dislike of Russia. John McCain, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Victoria Nuland-Kagan. Clearly, the West was on the side of the anti-government, anti-Russian forces.
Then the protest turned very violent. We know now that the West had planned a coup. They schemed to overthrow President Yanukovych and install a puppet leader who would support the West against Russia. They carried out a false-flag operation whereby snipers killed scores of protesters. The story was that this violent crackdown against the protesters was the work of Yanukovych. In fact, the murderers had been hired by the West to discredit him and foment ever more anger among the ethnic Ukrainians. During the week beginning on February 18, the violence came to a head in Maidan. A group of protesters was allowed to use the Canadian embassy near Maidan Square as a base for their operations. In other words, the Canadian government (Conservative under Harper) actively intervened in the overthrow of the democratically-elected president. While the exact details of Canada’s involvement have never been divulged, the basic facts have been acknowledged by the ambassador and embassy staff.
In 2014, Canada aligned itself with neo-Nazis in support of a violent coup in Ukraine. In 2022, in Ottawa, a different Canadian government (Liberal under Trudeau) labelled peaceful protesters as Nazis as a prelude to a violent suppression of their constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and expression. The ironies don’t end there. Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, played a central role in the government crackdown on constitutional rights and freedoms. She is the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator from World War Two. With that heritage, it stretches credibility to accept that she was unaware of the significance of the banner that she was holding at a rally in Toronto in support of Ukrainians protesting the Russian operation in their country. Deputy Prime Minister Freeland stood with the banner of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The banner and slogans written on it – “glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes” – were adopted by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1941, in support of the Nazis during the war.
By contrast, the one Nazi flag that was seen one day in Ottawa at the Freedom protest in 2022 was almost certainly planted by the government. It was incongruous with the protest. It made no sense except as a false flag (literally) to discredit the protesters. The image was then used to claim that the people protesting against the government’s unlawful suppression of their constitutional rights and freedoms were Nazis. The government and their allies in the media cartel also claimed that the Ottawa protesters intended to violently overthrow the government. However, it was the government that violently attacked the protesters. Then, before a fortnight had passed, Freeland is proudly supporting a neo-Nazi group on Toronto’s streets. Eight years earlier, Canada had actively supported actual neo-Nazis who actually did overthrow the government in Kiev.