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Election may not change Canada's interaction with world

I doubt the Canadian election can have much effect on Canadian collaboration commitments, says West Creston letter writer Robert Betts...

To the Editor:

I agree in part with Peter Bulkowski’s letter (“Simplification omitted key information in letter about West and Stephen Harper”), but his brief mention of current politics was news to me although I have tried to keep abreast of endless war news on the eastern front from a number of Internet sources. I do agree that Canada’s foreign policy has been for the most part consistent with NATO policy, with the exception of having kept Canada out of the Vietnam War, and I doubt whether the Canadian election this October can have much of an effect on Canadian collaboration commitments.

As to Peter’s feelings about the horrors of communism, I can appreciate that. But at the same time, I can understand the deep feelings against neo-Nazism on the part of Russians who lost 20 or 30 million people fighting Hitler’s march on Moscow. Ukraine was part of the battle of Kursk, the biggest, most horrific armoured land battle in history with horrendous losses on both sides, but which nevertheless ended Hitler’s attempts at conquering the U.S.S.R. Indeed, the current disaster in Ukraine is a reminder of its tragic past. But times change and current politics are different.

Rules change by convenience at the international level. NATO supported Kosovo rebels by massively bombing Serbia into giving up part of its national heritage. Perhaps for that reason, Russia did not feel deterred from rescuing Russian speakers from former Georgia president Mikheil Saakashvili’s military attack on Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008.

Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko is a tragic figure, a loser. He foolishly thought the neoconservatives, Valerie Nuland and her ilk, were his friends, with their $5 billion to install the Kiev junta so that alliance with NATO would bring glory to Ukraine. Some think that support for the neo-Nazi minority was intended to make Putin lose his cool and invade. But he did not. If the Russian army had invaded, it would have been more than obvious rather than mere war propaganda. The Odessa massacre and program of genocide of Russian speakers united eastern Ukraine behind the rebels, and resulted in volunteers from Europe and Russia.

Poroshenko’s incompetence as a military leader resulted in terrible losses in the field of battle. And it has achieved one more of a long list of failed states from NATO interventions. The additional NATO troops now entering Ukraine as “advisors” can only increase the demolition and misery while Europe and Russia contends with more war refugees.

As the clock edges toward midnight in the nuclear garden of evil, I think current Western politics is one sick puppy.

Robert Betts

West Creston