Disarmament is bad
Re: Russia, China, and North Korea could form new power alliance (March 7)
Say what you want about Donald Trump, but if Putin had him under his thumb the whole time, why did Putin annex Crimea during Obama’s term (2014) and invade Ukraine a whole year after Trump left office? I think this has less to do with Trump allegedly empowering Putin, and a whole lot more to do with Putin knowing that touchy-feely left-leaning leaders of major world powers won’t actually put boots on the ground to stop him, and he’s betting neither will the countries who depend on Russian natural gas.
Germany especially is in a huge bind due to shutting down not only coal-fired but also nuclear power plants to focus on solar and wind and finding out this wasn’t sufficient and ended up needing to import gas from Russia.
Canada’s been neglecting its own military because boomer flower children have been running the show for years, and apparently they never learned while growing up that you can’t convince or force people to have empathy. That’s the fatal flaw in the disarmament-based “give world peace a chance” approach to foreign policy. If humanity has failed to learn anything, it’s that there’s some conflicts you simply cannot negotiate your way out of. Not only that, Canada is oddly obsessed with disarming the populace of “military style firearms” in the name of “public safety”, but I can’t help but wonder if such an action is making us a more appealing target for invasion, ourselves. Nobody would invade the U.S. not only because of the U.S.’s military, but because of all the armed private citizens.
It doesn’t help that Ukraine was convinced, mostly by France and Germany, to give up their nuclear weapons in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Nor does it help that Obama convinced Ukraine to do away with a bunch of other military assets. They all made hollow promises to support Ukraine if Russia got any ideas. Now it’s too late, but they sure have the benefit of hindsight that disarmament is bad.
April J. Gibson
Duncan