by Michael Nickerson
DO YOU LIKE to gamble? I bet you do; gets the blood racing, those synapses tingling. Nothing like that rush of adrenaline when it’s all on the line! So let’s play. You pick the game and I’ll set the stakes. A war game, huh? Right, then I bet that if you win you will feel righteous, fulfilled, and possibly rich if you’ve invested in defence companies. You lose, and everyone you know will die, plus millions you don’t know...that and your retirement savings will be worthless.
Oh, are those stakes too high for you? Pity, because you’d be surprised how many people are eager to actually take that bet and gamble away your very existence. Pundits, politicians, retired generals, at least one crazed autocrat, along with the usual tub thumpers that tend to think with anything other than their brains. Easy marks all when it comes to World War III.
Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the world faced such an existential threat as it does now. I speak of course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the very real standoff that has resulted between Russia and NATO. It’s been almost six decades since anyone talked seriously about the prospect of nuclear war, yet here we are.
And to be clear, things have advanced a tad since 1962 when John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a metaphorical staring contest with the world hanging in the balance. While the nuclear capacity of both the US and the USSR was capable at the time of ending millions of lives and essentially destroying modern civilization, today Russia and NATO have it in their grasp to kill hundreds of millions in short order, and billions by the time the radioactive dust settles. That’s not hyperbole. They call it “mutually assured destruction” for a reason.
“Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the world faced such an existential threat as it does now.” (WIKIPEDIA)
Yet it’s amazing to hear many influential people urge, cheer, or try to shame NATO into a nuclear fist fight with Russia. Our former Chief of the Defence Staff General (ret.) Rick “Big Cod” Hillier recently pushed for NATO to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine, bringing NATO in direct conflict with Russia. In an interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon the old general suggested that “to say that that might be escalatory, I think that shows the lack of backbone in NATO right now.” In other words, you’re all wimps, give me the dice.
Then there is Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland who recently opined:
“There are moments in history when the great struggle between freedom and tyranny comes down to one fight in one place, which is waged for all of humanity.” Now this is from a woman who had never even heard of the New Veterans Charter and the plight of Canadian veterans when she first ran for office (I know, because she told me). Now she’s flag waving and tub thumping with abandon, a cheer- leader on the road to potential nuclear Armageddon.
Caught in the middle of it all is of course Ukraine, its people desperately, though rather impressively, fighting for their lives and their sovereignty. It’s horrible to watch, to stand by and not do something to help. Yet the west so far has done everything short of direct confrontation.
Well almost. What we don’t seem prepared to do is to put some of our cherished ideals and rhetoric aside and engage with those we otherwise wouldn’t to find a solution. Specifically I refer to China, human rights warts and all, a player that has a common interest with Canada, the west, and the world: Stability. As many have observed, Russia is the junior partner in their recent alliance, and crazy as it sounds it is not in China’s interest for thermonuclear war to break out. Yet there has been a tendency in recent years to isolate and vilify China, particularly under US President Biden, and make this an ideological battle, of autocracies versus democracies.
The world has forgotten just how much worse it can truly get. I hope to hell we catch on before we gamble our existence away.