Defrocked Priest of Peace? Trudeau Aims Missiles at Moscow

10-year-old Justin touring the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille in France with his father in 1982. Photograph Source: PBA Lille – CC BY-SA 4.0

Pierre Trudeau must be rolling in his grave over his heir’s Ukrainian policy. While other more powerful allies waver, Trudeau “le petite” said he “fully supports” firing long-range missiles deep into Russia. He said nothing about the risk of nuclear war, something about which his father was very concerned.

Already as a youth, Pierre Trudeau staked his claim as a peace activist when he spoke at a rally in 1942 in support of Montreal mayoral candidate Jean Drapeau, “candidate of the conscripted.” Like many Quebecois Trudeau was opposed to conscription, and did not volunteer for military service.

Writing in Cite Libre in 1963, Pierre Elliot Trudeau mocked Canada’s Nobel Peace winning Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson for deploying nuclear weapons, calling him the “defrocked priest of peace.”

When he succeeded Pearson as Prime Minister, Trudeau made good on his anti-war activism by denuclearizing the Canadian military, which remains the case today.

In fact, Canada was the first country with significant nuclear capability to reject nuclear weapons. This policy was reinforced in 1970 when Canada signed the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in 1978 when Trudeau proposed his ambitious strategy of “suffocation in the laboratory” of the nuclear arms race to the United Nations.

I myself got involved as a student at Mount Allison University in Trudeau’s “Peace Initiative” of 1983. Perhaps intended as his final piece de resistance, Prime Minister Trudeau toured the world’s capitals in his last months in office, begging leaders to “lower the megaphones” in order to avert nuclear war after the downing of KAL 0007.

At the time I was on the Student Council, and passed a motion of support for the Trudeau “Peace Initiative.” This caught the attention of the Prime Minister’s office and the Globe and Mail! I was interviewed by Steve Paikin, now anchor of TV Ontario’s The Agenda, about our plan for an international peace dialogue at the student council level in the USA and USSR.

With this personal history in mind, you can imagine my alarm when I read that, despite claims of pursuing a “feminist foreign policy,” the current Trudeau government has loudly proclaimed support for the use of long-range weapons against Russia. Here the dangers posed by the influence of Canada’s infamous Ukrainian nationalist Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, reveal themselves in their most potent form.

President Putin of Russia has made it clear that such use of long-range weapons would, “change the very essence of the conflict.” It would no longer be a “special operation” aimed at resolving territorial disputes between Russia and Ukraine, but “would mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia.”

Strangely, the corporate media does not seem to notice the danger of nuclear escalation in such a scenario, as was the case during the Cuban missile crisis. Rather, the focus of media coverage is on the efficacy of such missile attacks as part of Zelensky’s “Victory Plan.”

Even in 1962, it would seem the media’s role was similarly to mollify public fears of nuclear holocaust. Walter Cronkite’s special report of October 24^th 1962 used such phrases as “rocket fire,” “missiles” and “offensive weapons” but studiously avoided use of the word “nuclear” weapons.

Unlike President Kennedy, who was quite explicit that “nuclear” weapons of “mass destruction” were being stationed on the “imprisoned isle” of Cuba in his televised address of October 22^nd, 1962, Prime Minister Trudeau’s only concern is that Ukraine “must win” (as if there are ever any winners in war) whatever the consequences.

And yet, if worst comes to worst, what better target for an initial Russian nuclear attack than Canada, a country that borders the USA like Ukraine borders Russia, but is not part of the USA? It may be a matter of debate whether the United States would sacrifice Chicago for Bonn, but would they for Saskatoon? Or Iqaluit?

Canadian eagerness to support Ukraine, epitomized by the Ukrainian Nazi in Parliament scandal involving Yaroslav Hunka, is like painting a giant red bulls-eye on our back. Perhaps that is why there has been no media coverage of Canada’s refusal to accede to the Russian request for the extradition of Hunka, “charged in absentia with genocide of civilians on the territory of Ukraine during World War II, when he served in the SS Galicia division.”

As we peer across the arctic tundra toward our northern neighbor, Canadians may take some comfort in the fact that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has recently said that “nobody wants a nuclear war.” But he has also said that Moscow will “defend its interests in the Arctic both in diplomatic and military terms,” so which is which?

Luckily, the one good thing about nuclear weapons is their disciplinary power. It seems that the modern Leviathan can only restrain itself from the worst excesses of violence, as we witnessed during the world wars, because a thermonuclear “sword” hangs over its head by a thin frayed wire.

However, everything has its breaking point. If we take seriously the Russian government’s repeated claim that the “collective west” is bent on its “strategic defeat”, then it may very well start to behave like the cornered rat of Putin’s childhood:

There, on that stair landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered. There were hordes of rats in the front entryway. My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. Once I spotted a huge rat and pursued it down the hall until I drove it into a corner. It had nowhere to run. Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me. I was surprised and frightened. Now the rat was chasing me. It jumped across the landing and down the stairs. Luckily, I was a little faster and I managed to slam the door shut in its nose.

There were no rats in the corners of 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa where the entitled son of a Prime Minister grew up, unlike the “horrid” little communal apartment in St. Petersburg from which Vladimir Putin emerged. It may therefore not be surprising that Trudeau “le petite” is chasing the Russian hordes around, though with missiles not sticks, oblivious to the impending dangers.

The post Defrocked Priest of Peace? Trudeau Aims Missiles at Moscow appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Bentley.

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