[The Apprentice]

The Case for Separation: Not Quebec, but Canada from the USA

With the elevation of John Bolton, infamous neocon liar and unabashed warmonger, to national security adviser to Donald Trump, the risk of the United States, and its erstwhile allies, to soon engage in a new war has risen exponentially. 

Whereas Canada, as a junior member of NATO, has survived with mixed success in avoiding American military adventurism in the past, the prospect of our country being dragged involuntarily into yet another disastrous American war demands a sober re-consideration of our treaty obligations regarding NATO. There is a very real danger by way of our NATO commitment, via Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, of being drafted into a worldwide war triggered more by US domestic political weakness than by any objective threat to the existence and welfare of Canada. We must be motivated at all times by what is in the best interests of Canadians, not Americans making America great again.

It is hard to exaggerate the degree of integration between our two nations. Rather than cousins, we are more akin to congenital twins. We share especially strong familial, social, economic and political bonds. Any separation of us two involves high risks of significant injury to Canada’s wellbeing and ultimately, its sovereignty. But at what point does our sovereignty, our values we Canadians fancy ourselves to hold, become so compromised to the point of irrelevance if we are compelled to join in a war we know to be unjustified, ill-conceived, immoral and illegal. America’s Iraq War qualifies, as did its intervention via NATO in Libya and its present continuing uninvited occupation of one-third of Syria, and of course, its looming next big adventure in Iran. Query how any of these NATO sponsored and supported missions were in the best interests of us Canadians.

NATO had its genesis after World War II binding the US and its mostly North Atlantic western European allies into a common mutual defense alliance against the perceived threat of the Soviet Union and its equivalent eastern European Warsaw Pact, spawning what was known as the Cold War. The Cold War involved prodigious investments in military buildups of tanks, world-wide proxy wars, ballistic intercontinental missiles, and nuclear weapons, all proven pointless by history with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union. From the rubble arose Russia, half the size of the Soviet Union and a pale shadow of the threat painted by Western “intelligence” sources. Consequently, this end of NATO’s raison d’etre triggered the beginning of its existential crisis.

Today’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization is neither North Atlantic in its orientation nor a treaty organization of co-equal states. Over half of its member states are situated in eastern Europe, being of recent and expeditious admission and coincidentally mostly bordering Russia. With the apparent coming departure of Turkey and the arrival of the Ukraine, that eastern slant will become ever more pronounced. The membership of states is obviously not an alliance of co-equals. Given that NATO advertises that “…consensus decision-making means that there is no voting at NATO. Consultations take place until a decision that is acceptable to all”, it is to be supposed that Estonia, with a total population roughly equivalent to the City of Ottawa, has as equal a say in the initiation of World War III by NATO as does the United States. The United States contributes 72% of total NATO military expenditures. In the real world, dollars are votes, as they have proven to be in one member’s “democratic” elections, and NATO is unquestionably an extension and imposition of US foreign policy right up to the Russian border.

Canada as a NATO member in accordance with Article 5, is committed to war on the principle that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” Canada committed to that principle in 1949 when Moscow was 2,265 km from Berlin, NATO’s then eastern-most outpost. It is still committed to that principle now that Moscow is 647 km from NATO’s Latvia (Pop.: 1.9m), in which Canada has stationed 450 volunteers of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment out of Oromocto, New Brunswick. They are there to deter Russia’s 350,000 soldiers with 2,176 aircraft and 491 intercontinental ballistic missiles from even thinking about invading Latvia to presumably seize its abundance of limestone.

Given the present anti-Russian constellation of an extremely militant John Bolton advising an imbecilic Donald Trump about national security, a politically precarious British PM considering invoking NATO’s Article 5 over the recent poisoning of a Russian British spy, and a potential military confrontation between NATO members, Muslim Turkey versus the US in Syria, Canada should seriously reconsider its commitment to NATO and the heightened risk of war it may bring. Are Canadians willing to die for Latvia? This is the meaning of NATO. It is time to say no, no to NATO.

Please could you post a link for this data.

I think the opt out clause for any place and state is long past achievable, the final stages and our leaders have been chosen from birth and given to us, like it or not, to bring the next stage of manufactured evolution to become reality, but we can all live in hope that we can still prevent the same happening again.