If NATO has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years, why is there war in Ukraine?

The title of Murray Brewster’s CBC story yesterday was confusing; NATO at 75: Is Canada losing its grip on the world’s greatest military alliance? In what sense was NATO ever in Canada’s grip? Is this just another example of state media feeding the delusion that we’re a really big deal on the world stage? Here’s another head-scratcher from CBC, this one a quote from Chrystia Freeland; US ‘unable to step up’ on Ukraine aid, leaving Canada to fill the gap. Yup, who needs the Americans when Canada’s got your back? What rubbish! Any reasonable assessment about who’s who in NATO would conclude that it’s Uncle Sam who has NATO in his grip, and the other 31 members merely follow instructions issued from Washington. As for gap-filling, there’s substantially more of that coming from countries other than Canada while congress demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of the World’s Leading Democracy. The CBC interview with Freeland that CBC aired this morning reminded me yet again what an accomplished bullshitter the woman is. She takes the tone of a school marm getting pissy with a not-too-bright grade 2 class because she’s having to explain something for the third time. Mostly what she was explaining was there wouldn’t be any actual answers to the questions she was being asked. For most of the past two years we’ve been hearing over and over that Ukraine will prevail. Just a few more months and a few more billions. That’s now become a few years and a few more hundreds of billions. As we celebrate NATO’s 75 years of “keeping the peace in Europe,” the harsh reality is that NATO gravely miscalculated by expanding relentlessly eastward. Russia has been warning for at least 15 years that would lead to war, but we dismissed their concerns and kept pushing. And now we’re in the soup, so to speak. The “sanctions from hell” that were to reduce the ruble to rubble have hurt Europe much more than Russia, which is producing armaments far faster than what the combined industrial capacity of NATO is capable of. But since “we can’t allow Putin to win,” we have no option but to stay the course… another ten years and a few trillions, and victory will be ours!