As the U.S. sides with dictators, Canada must prepare

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/02/2025 (394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s hard to even comprehend: the United States voting with Russia, North Korea and Belarus against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia for its decision to attack Ukraine.

They didn’t abstain. No, they voted with Russia. With North Korea.

And it’s just the latest in a strange effort to somehow try to make Russia, the invader of a sovereign nation, into some odd form of the good guy.

It seemed strange enough that in recent media interviews and news conferences, neither Donald Trump nor his minions could actually admit that Russia started the war in Ukraine, despite absolutely incontrovertible evidence — video, audio, and even Russian statements to that effect in 2022.

“I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside,” Vladimir Putin said as his soldiers entered Ukraine. “No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Nothing there that would suggest Russia was the aggressor, right?

Stranger still that Donald Trump can call duly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator, but can’t seem to find the same word in his vocabulary when asked if Putin deserves the description.

“I don’t use those words lightly,” Trump answered when asked directly about Putin.

Luckily, there are those who don’t accept Trump’s recasting of the Russian actions. Plenty of people.

French President Emmanuel Macron managed to fact-check Trump to his face at a White House news conference yesterday following their meeting, saying bluntly, “I support the idea of Ukraine being compensated first because they are the ones who have lost a lot of their fellow citizens, and have been destroyed by this attack… Second, all of those who paid should be compensated not by Ukraine — by Russia, because they started the war.”

There is also the straight talk of Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the UN.

“We must not accept the lie that, of all equal sovereign states, Russia’s course is now somehow fixed, unmovable — and that we must discard the UN Charter to accommodate President Putin’s imperial ambitions,” Rae said.

Trump argues that he wants to be seen as “a peacemaker and as a unifier. I want to bring peace, not war.”

Bringing peace by surrendering Ukraine to Russian demands and by, at the same time, demanding the U.S. get by Ukraine for the privilege of being abandoned by the Americans, does not sound like being a unifier.

It sounds like capitulation.

Beyond that, Trump has another problem: who on Earth would expect him to be able to create a binding peace, when he clearly does not believe that any contract is worth the paper it is printed on, and can be abrogated any time he feels like it?

Don’t forget, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have one clear thing in common: in 1994, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons after both the United States and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, where the signatories agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders, and to refrain from the use or threat of military force. Ukraine had one-third of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons on its soil.

Putin first broke that agreement when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 — the U.S. is preparing to break it now with its apparent decision to renege on its pledge to uphold the deal and protect Ukraine.

The United States of America under Trump has decided to turn its back on an ally. If it can happen to Ukraine, who is next? Who is safe?

It’s time for Canada to plan for defence — with equipment from countries other than the U.S. — and to make alliances with countries that keep their word.