NATO

Saturday May 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 14, 2022

Finland Nato: Russia threatens to retaliate over membership move

April 12, 2022

A foreign ministry statement said the move would seriously damage bilateral relations, as well as security and stability in northern Europe.

Earlier, Finland’s president and PM called for the country to apply for Nato membership “without delay”.

It comes amid a surge in public support for Nato membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finland shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia. Until now, it has stayed out of Nato to avoid antagonising its eastern neighbour.

Finland will formally announce its decision on Sunday after it has been considered by parliament and other senior political figures.

Sweden has said it will announce a similar decision on the same day.

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he expects the process of giving Sweden and Finland membership to happen “quite quickly”.

May 3, 2022

The White House said the US would back a Nato application from both countries if they apply.

The Russian statement (in Russian) described Finland’s move as “a radical change in the country’s foreign policy”.

“Finland’s accession to Nato will cause serious damage to bilateral Russian-Finnish relations and the maintaining of stability and security in the Northern European region,” it said.

“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to neutralise the threats to its national security that arise from this.”

However, Moscow has not specified what steps it plans to take.

Russia’s deputy UN representative Dmitry Polyansky said Sweden and Finland would become possible targets for Russia if they become Nato members, according to Russian news agency Ria.

Russian officials were responding to a joint statement by Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin, which said the two leaders expected a decision on Nato membership in the next few days.

“Nato membership would strengthen Finland’s security,” it said. “As a member of Nato, Finland would strengthen the entire defence alliance. Finland must apply for Nato membership without delay.”

Speaking to journalists later, Mr Niinisto responded to Russian concerns and blamed the move on Moscow’s invasion.

An opinion poll last week put support in Finland for joining Nato at 76%, with 12% against, a big swing towards membership since before the invasion.

Finland and the USSR were on opposing sides in World War Two, with the Finns famously fending off a Soviet invasion in 1939-40. (BBC) 

 

Tuesday April 12, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 12, 2022

Zelenskyy says Ukraine is defending its basic human rights

“We are defending the ability for a person to live in the modern world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

March 1, 2022

In an interview taped Wednesday in Kyiv, Zelenskyy told Pelley his country remains united because it has no other choice.

“We united as a nation” Zelenskyy said to Pelley, speaking through an interpreter. “The weakest people became strong. The strong people became the strongest, most powerful, so powerful that nobody could have outdone them. In this way, our nation of strong and weak people has transformed into one solid, strong force. And one strong community.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the Ukrainian presidency in 2019 with 73% of the vote. He told Pelley he was urged by multiple people leave the country at the start of the war but chose to stay.

“Before I do something, I analyze the situation. I’ve always done it calmly, without any chaos,” Zelenskyy said through an interpreter. “I might not be the strongest warrior. But not I’m willing to betray anyone.”

Friday April 1, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 1, 2022

Minister of Everything must tell Liberals they can’t have it all

December 30, 2021

Ms. Freeland is now tasked with delivering a budget at a critical time for Canada: when the country is in the early yet unstable stages of pandemic recovery, when a war is being fought in Ukraine, when drought caused by climate change has affected domestic and global yields and when inflation in Canada and abroad is surging. Indeed, the country is now at a precarious financial moment, when it could use the steady hand of that minister it saw on Feb. 24, speaking with genuine conviction about a policy she believes in deeply. What it doesn’t need is a minister dressed in Liberal garb, selling a politically advantageous budget when Canada can’t endure any more risk.

Next week, Ms. Freeland will produce a budget that accounts for her government’s many spending promises – and the new spending promises inherited through the supply-and-confidence agreement with the NDP, plus a likely increase in defence spending – while somehow also reassuring capital markets and stimulating long-term growth. This government has never been shy about spending beyond its means, and it has done so every year far beyond projections, while citing low interest rates and an ill-defined need to “invest” in the economy. The pandemic, of course, necessitated emergency spending on a record scale, although Canada’s trillion-dollar debt and projected deficits over the coming years now mean the country is staring down hefty financing costs: $43.5-billion in 2025-26, to cite one figure from a recent Parliamentary Budget Officer report. For context, the government is spending less than that to settle a years-long dispute over compensation for Indigenous children.

September 22, 2021

With the economy now recovering (GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2021 exceeded the forecast rate, and the unemployment rate is down to prepandemic levels), the time for runaway, short-term spending is over, and indeed it risks exacerbating inflationary pressures. Interest rates are going up, and Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to be 48 per cent for 2021-22 (up from 31.2 per cent in 2019-20), which means the government has far less room to manoeuvre should it get hit with another crisis. The Liberal Party’s impulse may be to continue to promise everything – Child care! Dental care! Fighter jets! Green retrofits! Rapid housing! – and to leave the bill for some future government to sort out, which is why Canada depends on Ms. Freeland now to make some tough calls and bring the budget down to earth. (The Globe & Mail) 

 

Friday March 11, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 11, 2022

Military neglect catches up with Canada

November 17, 2015

It was reassuring to hear Justin Trudeau pledge Canada’s unwavering support for its European allies this week. It would have been even better if the prime minister had a strong Canadian military to back him up. But he doesn’t and brave words won’t be enough to make 150,000 Russian soldiers retreat from Ukraine. Just when it’s needed more than at any time since the Second World War, Canada’s military muscle has gone soft because a generation of federal governments consistently went cheap on military spending. And Canadians let them do it.

Our soldiers, sailors and aircrew are without doubt well-trained and respected internationally. But they are too few in number and too poorly equipped to do the job Canada expects them to do. Despite more than a decade of trying, we have yet to replace our ancient fleet of CF-18 fighter jets, our outdated frigates or our retired naval destroyers. Our Armed Forces need 10,000 more people to reach full strength — but such growth is nowhere in sight. In fact, to meet our NATO commitments, we would have to boost our annual $24-billion military budget by about $9 billion. At this point, there is no indication the federal government is prepared to do that.

Tuesday June 15, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 15, 2021

The Wreckage Donald Trump Left Behind

January 16, 2020

Somewhere in China, a company recently received an order for boxes and boxes of reusable face masks with g7 uk 2021 embroidered on them. Over the weekend in Cornwall, in southwest England, these little bits of protective cloth were handed to journalists covering the 2021 summit of some of the world’s most powerful industrial economies—so they could write in safety about these leaders’ efforts to contain China.

August 24, 2019

The irony of the situation neatly summed up the trouble with this year’s G7 summit. The gathering was supposed to mark a turning point, a physical meeting symbolizing not only the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic but also a return to something approaching normalcy after the years of Donald Trump and Brexit. And in certain senses it was. With Joe Biden—the walking embodiment of the traditional American paterfamilias that Trump was not—no one feared a sudden explosion or American walkout as before. Biden is not the sort of person to hurl Starbursts at another leader in a fit of pique. And yet, the reality was that the leaders in attendance were playing their diplomatic games within tram lines graffitied on the floor largely by the former U.S. president, not the incumbent one.

January 12, 2021

Emerging from a weekend of summitry last night, it was hard to avoid the reality that the great questions hanging over the gathering were ones shaped either by Trump or by the years of Trump: Europe’s frustration with American vaccine protectionism (which began under Trump but has been maintained by Biden), ongoing disputes over Brexit, the future of NATO, worries over Russian interference, and, ultimately, China, the great other at this event. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her closing remarks: “Look, the election of Joe Biden as U.S. president doesn’t mean that the world no longer has problems.”

June 9, 2018

Everywhere you looked—whether in the communiqué itself, or the press conferences and summaries of leaders’ meetings—you could see the unresolved questions of the past few years, as presidents and prime ministers reacted to the problems thrown up, exacerbated, or actively caused by Trump. All agreed that they wanted to move on from the instability of his tenure, but they seemed divided and unclear about how, never mind what the new era should look like. With Biden’s congressional majority in doubt and Trump’s future intentions uncertain, Europe retains a latent fear that the U.S. is merely between eruptions, not recovering from one.

May 24, 2017

The leaders seemed to embody this sense of time being paused. Merkel has been chancellor so long, she attended her first G7 summit with George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Italy’s Mario Draghi might be a new prime minister, but he is no stranger to the world’s global establishment—a representative of the old order if ever there was one. Even Biden himself, hailed as a “breath of fresh air” by the summit’s host, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is hardly a new face on the world stage.

Ultimately, this G7 summit seemed to be stuck somewhere between the past and the future—between the era of Trump and the world some of these politicians hope to create. (The Atlantic)