I’ve not been writing as much lately, probably due to the starting of the Blue Jays 2022 season coupled with the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And there is much to write about. I should explore gun violence in America and consider how we prevent the American mental disease on guns from infecting Canada. Or is it too late for that? I could explore the aftermath of the Roe v Wade reversal and try to sort out for myself exactly what I feel about the complicated and troublesome abortion issue. I could rain down a little more invective on the monarchy and try to convince you that we should all become anti-monarchists, and I could reveal my concerns about the proposed Papal visit to Canada and the current state of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

But really, the most troublesome issue in the world today is undoubtedly still the war in Ukraine, and it continues to deserve attention. I have this nasty feeling that this criminal invasion is slowly becoming old news. Every politician in the world has grabbed his or her share of TV time expostulating on how much they support Ukraine or (rarely) Russia, and many are moving on to other things. And if they’re not moving on, at least it’s hard for them to find something different or meaningful to say about it. The truth is that while I was riveted to the war news back in February and early March, I now find it easy to turn away from Ukraine war news because little seems to change. And that’s wrong. We need to keep that conflict alive in our minds and our hearts and we need to continue to seek resolution.

When I first wrote about the Ukraine events, I reflected on what it meant for Canada, and specifically whether our Canadian Armed Forces are adequately equipped and prepared for a conflict situation. The answer was no, not good enough. So, what has happened since then? 

On March 28^th, the government announced a commitment to buying the F35 fighter plane. That ought to have made me happy, since I advocated strongly for that action in my March 5^th blog. In truth, the decision itself was fine. The announcement, however, almost made me puke. The government laced the decision announcement with phrases like “Following a rigorous evaluation of proposals…..will now enter into the finalization phase of the procurement process with the top-ranked bidder….major milestone in this open, fair and competitive process….The multi-step assessment process took into account a wide range of factors…..We are confident that this competitive process will deliver the best….Going forward, the Government of Canada will continue to work toward the delivery of aircraft as early as 2025. 

OK Liberal Party, we get it. The Conservatives decided on the basis of the best advice available back around 2009 that they would buy F35s, but the auditor general called them out on failing to tender the procurement through an acceptable competitive process. You won the PM’s office in 2015 and in 2016 formally cancelled the order for F35 fighter jets. And now, after seven years in office (seven years!) you finally have ordered the fighter jet that your predecessors had selected 13 years ago. But sure, we understand. You ran a terrific procurement process. Wunderbar! 

What a sanctimonious self-serving crock of shit that announcement is. Instead of patting yourselves on the back you should be apologizing to Canadians for failing to take the necessary action until a conflict crisis made it impossible for you to ignore reality any longer. And people, please note that final sentence about delivery by 2025. That’s not a promised delivery date, it’s an optimistic target. We might feel relieved that we’ve finally gotten serious about getting some F35s, but we shouldn’t see this as a job well done. It wasn’t well done, and it’s not over yet.

Following that announcement, the government tabled a budget on April 7^th. In the budget they announced an additional $8B in defence spending over previously committed defence program spending. The April 7^th article in Politico reporting on the budget said “Taken together, the new investments will raise Canadian defense spending, as a share of GDP, to 1.5 percent after five years, a senior government official said….“We’re great on rhetoric, but I’m not seeing any substance,” Robert Huebert, a University of Calgary defense expert, told POLITICO. “With inflation brought into consideration, I doubt that we moved a number at all on our [1.36 percent]. … We talk the talk, but I don’t see much action.”

We aspire to reach 1.5% of GDP after five years? Wow, we are going all in, aren’t we? Contrast that cautious budget approach with the response of Germany to the Ukraine crisis. Germany committed to reaching 2% of GDP in defence spending this year, and more than doubled their defence budget, from 43 billion euros to 100 billion euros. 

The part of the update note is simple. Keep pressure on your MP to improve defence spending for Canada. Write, phone, use social media – whatever you like. I understand that Covid spending has given our government some serious handcuffs when it comes to investing more on defence. But the bottom line is that it’s the government’s job to figure this out and get it done. It’s becoming a perilous world, and we cannot afford to be ill-prepared to resist aggression.

So that’s where Canada stands. What about Ukraine? What’s happening there? It’s a little bit of same old, same old. Russia’s military philosophy, staffing and equipment places a heavy emphasis on artillery, and they are using that artillery to pulverize civilian targets and destroy the nation’s infrastructure. Russia has pulled back from its assault on Kiev (although there were reports of shelling there this morning) and the war has devolved into hard slogging and slow movement in eastern Ukraine. Recently Putin made a statement that he believed the west would blink first. That prompted a discussion yesterday on Smerconish, a CNN public affairs program, of whether Putin could win a protracted war of attrition. The viewing audience voted No, they didn’t think Putin could win a long dragged out war. I’m very concerned that the viewing audience was wrong. This war needs to be brought to a close very quickly. 

First, and most importantly, people are dying. We can send all the weapons to Ukraine that we want. At some point, if this war doesn’t end soon, President Zelinsky will have no more sacrificial lambs to send out to fire those weapons. Putin is also losing soldiers, which is tragic for their wives and children and other family members, but the Russian psyche seems to be well-adjusted to the use of young people as cannon fodder, and Putin has more young people to sacrifice than Zelinsky does. 

Second, the UN has warned repeatedly that the inability to ship grains from Ukraine now is going to lead to food shortages around the world, and especially in the under-developed areas of the world. In addition to the inability to ship out existing food-stocks, there is the probability that smaller crops will be planted or harvested in Ukraine this year which will extend and exacerbate the food shortage issue. According to The Economist “The high cost of staple foods has already raised the number of people who cannot be sure of getting enough to eat by 440m, to 1.6bn. Nearly 250m are on the brink of famine.” So, it is a world-wide priority to get Ukraine back into the food production business. 

Third, cracks are beginning to show in the NATO-centred alliance against Russia. Former east-bloc countries like Estonia and Poland are adamant that there is no negotiation with Putin, and that anything like a concession to Russia over Ukraine territory will amount to an invitation to invade some other countries. The larger central European bloc, (Germany, France, Italy etc) are more focused on peace talks and negotiations. One hundred days into the war, Russia continues to fund their war by the profits from gas and oil sales to the European nations which are imposing sanctions on Russia. Although embargos have been discussed, they have not been implemented. Germany has, until very recently, opposed such an embargo. They are beginning to make noises like they might support an embargo on gas, but they’re not there yet. Italy’s imports of Russian oil have actually increased since the war began. And Viktor Orban, the Russian boot-licking president of Hungary is blocking an EU embargo on Russian oil. To be fair, Hungary’s energy supply is seriously at risk if Russian energy sources are cut off, but that fact illustrates the main point. Europe wants to sanction Russia and punish it for its actions in Ukraine, but there appear to be limits on how far they will go. It sounds like that old saying about fighting – “get him Billy. I’ll back you…until my nose bleeds”. 

Fourth, the economics of war are terrible. If we want to continue to support Ukraine, western countries will need to pour billions of dollars into Ukraine support every month. With all countries struggling to combat inflation, the prospect of continuing to pour money into Ukraine with no end in sight will become increasingly unpopular. In particular, the US is going into mid-term elections, and inflation and economy, not the war in Ukraine, will be the dominant themes.

I have a solution. 

It starts with the United Nations – an institution in which I have mostly lost faith. If the United Nations is a relevant body, then it needs to take a strong lead to bring this to an end. Given the impending food shortages around the world, the UN has a strong case to seek to intervene. It should be possible to convince many of the African nations and India and South-east Asian countries to support concerted action. As always, China will be a key, but I believe it would be in China’s best interests to go along with the western nations on this one. The Economist reports that China’s food situation is also perilous. “China, the largest wheat producer, has said that, after rains delayed planting last year, this crop may be its worst-ever.” Let’s assume, therefore that food shortages are the driver that will allow the UN to act in concert to drive Russia and Ukraine to a diplomatic negotiation. What should be on the table?

Recently Henry Kissinger (yes, ancient Henry Kissinger from back in the Vitenam war days) gave a speech in which he opined that Ukraine needed to be prepared to cede territory to Russia to bring the war to an end. He further urged western nations not to “seek an embarrassing defeat for Russia in Ukraine, warning it could worsen Europe’s long-term stability.” Similarly, French President Macron has suggested that “Vladimir Putin must not be “humiliated” in Ukraine, despite the Russian president making a “historic and fundamental” mistake in invading his neighbour.” Unsurprisingly, Volodymyr Zelinsky disagrees. But sadly for Mr. Zelinsky he needs to grasp any possibility of shortening this disastrous war.

Winston Churchill, in his six-volume history of the second world war, blamed the war on the architects of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the first world war. That treaty imposed very onerous reparations on Germany, seeking to make them pay for the havoc they’d wrought in the Great War. In Churchill’s opinion, the second world was an obvious consequence of the decision to impose a crushing punishment on a defeated opponent. The lesson for us in Ukraine is that M. Macron is right. Our goal is not “justice” or “repayment”. Our goal is peace, and we need to be prepared to offer some face-saving measures to allow Putin to agree to walk away with a solution that he can present as a palatable alternative for his people.

The putative reason for the invasions of Ukraine (Crimea and then Ukraine proper) was to free ethnic Russians in Ukraine who were being oppressed by the genocidal Nazi-worshipping leaders of Ukraine. Some 17% of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians. Do they, in fact, want to go back to being part of Russia? I have been unable to find any evidence that Putin is right when he claims that separatists are in a majority, but neither have I found evidence that he’s wrong. Therefore, what I believe we offer Putin as a reason to end the war is a UN sponsored and supervised vote to determine which regions, if any, really want to become part of Mother Russia, with both Ukraine and Russia agreeing on a formula for determining boundaries after such a vote.

It seems simple to say that self-determination would establish borders, but it might not be quite that simple. Let’s suppose that districts one and two vote to remain in Ukraine, but district three to the west of one and two votes to become part of Russia. It would be impractical to create this little Russian-governed island inside Ukraine. So we’d need a pre-agreed way to fix that if it happened.

I believe that part of this deal would be resettlement packages. Ukraine would offer substantial economic incentives for Ukrainians to leave any newly created “Russian” districts and return to Ukraine. And Russia would offer substantial economic incentives for Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine in districts which voted to remain in Ukraine. Allowing, and enabling, dissidents to leave your country and settle in your neighbour’s back yard would be a great way to avoid problems in the future. And if even a few thousand people accepted the resettlement offers, Putin could claim to be a great liberator.

If all Ukraine districts voted to remain in Ukraine, that would be a great victory for the Ukraine government. If they vote to leave, what has Ukraine lost? They’ve lost malcontents and dissidents, but they will have gained peace and solidified a national identity. And maybe the world could collectively breathe a sigh of relief.As usual, I also seek your thoughts and comments of the serious topic of how to bring about a diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine war crisis.