Global offensive

In the decades following the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 by 12 Western nations, many of its members, including Canada, have participated in military campaigns which, according to the author of the relatively brief but fact-packed Canada & NATO, suggest the alliance fosters more death and destruction than peace and goodwill.

Examples of subterfuge, political manipulation and even timely assassinations reveal the birth pains that accompanied NATO’s arrival onto the world stage and its subsequent participation in regional wars, far removed from its originally intended Western Hemisphere protectorate, giving credence to the book’s subtitle, Myth of a Global Peacekeeper.

Comfortably readable in one sitting, this book summarizes NATO’s decades-long involvement in world affairs, as compiled by Manitoba writer Owen Schalk, who traces NATO’s controversial actions while offering alternative assessments of its contributions to world harmony.

Schalk’s published work includes Canada in Afghanistan (2023) and Targeting Libya (2025). He now boldly offers reasons for Canada’s withdrawal from NATO, positioning himself as a progressive-minded critic of Canada’s support for an organization he opines has consistently failed to live up to its stated “defensive” purpose.

Having swelled to 32 members, NATO has been involved in places far beyond its original scope, prompting Schalk to depict Canada’s participation in war-torn regions such as Afghanistan, Libya and the former Yugoslavia as purely offensive actions that strayed from the organization’s original aims.

His well-documented portrayal of NATO’s abandonment of its raison d’être, and subsequent veering into offensive military actions, may give readers momentary pause. But such portrayals lose their intended impact without acknowledgement of similarly well-documented revelations regarding lives lost when inhumane leaders are allowed unchallenged rule over defenceless populations.

Correctly asserting that the astronomical costs of several decades of military preparedness and participation in actual war campaigns has affected funding for much-needed social programs in Canada, Schalk’s reasons for abandoning a time-tested military alliance often flirt with utopian ideals of peace and goodwill.

Schalk tends to overlook the interdependency of a world where modern forms of travel, as well as instant communication, has rendered so-called “separate hemispheres” irrelevant, weakening his assertion that NATO’s actions in other parts of the world run counter to long-held comfortable notions of it being a peaceful bulwark against forces threatening “Western” democratic ideals.

It is, in his words, “an offensive organization that uses military force in order to gain access to resources and global markets, and neutralize threats to U.S.-led Western dominance,” a notion by itself worthy of more debate, especially when paired with the fact that American industries have profited by securing arms deals with Central and Eastern European members.

Yet Schalk shows a tendency to ignore historical context when criticizing NATO’s — and Canada’s — participation in military campaigns outside of Western spheres, depicting involvement in global affairs over the past 75-plus years as actions which “never promoted democracy.”

His main contention that “Canada’s withdrawal from NATO is long overdue” is supported by recounting engagements in wars that appear to have posed no territorial threats to our nation, while suggesting the organization’s very existence contributes to global tensions — as proven by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, whose proposed wish to join NATO sparked Europe’s most deadly conflict since the Second World War.

Schalk’s critique may be worthy of debate, but it conveniently offers few predictions of the consequences Canada or the entire world could face if it chose disengagement from an alliance now led by an unpredictable U.S. president.

The likely ensuing dismemberment of NATO could lead to an even more unpredictable future than what the world currently faces with its distasteful embrace of the “mutually destructive deterrent” theory.

Featuring a trove of alternative (and sometimes naive) socially conscious viewpoints, Canada & NATO is still a worthy study with the potential of igniting worthwhile debate about making the world a better place, and offers more grist for the ideological mills that keep hopeful analysts everywhere searching for ultimate truths.

Joseph Hnatiuk is a retired teacher.

Owen Schalk launches Canada & NATO: Myth of a Global Peacekeeper on Friday, April 10 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.