The Ukraine and the Game of War

After four years of ruthless, destructive warfare in the Ukraine, the world now finds itself in the middle of a Donald Trump initiated self-serving, chaotic peace process. 

The response of the EU nations is to insecurely fret that they will be left out by the Americans and that Trump will not be ‘tough’ enough on Russian President Vladimir Putin who the Europeans villainize for the war. 

Their solution is to pour their economies into arming themselves and the Ukraine to the teeth and engaging, in addition, in economic warfare with Russia. And yet all the while they are blind to the fact that as NATO members, they played a pivotal role in precipitating this war in the first place. 

They did this by surrounding Russia militarily over the decades and over the clear and repeated objections of the Russians. But these actions are typical of the rivalry games that militarists on all sides love to play. And militarists are not capable of insight, only blame. 

There are no heroes in this war, as there no heroes in any war despite what the propagandists sell to the public. But there is indeed a villain and that villain is militarism, a plague throughout human history and that now, in several ways, is driving the story of human history towards extinction.

Militarism is a game played almost exclusively by men. It is a game played with taxpayers’ money and everyone’s lives. There is no purpose to the game other than the game itself. It is always sold by the militarist to the naïve taxpayer as if it is serving a higher and righteous purpose to entice them to put down their money and berating those who object as stingy unpatriotic cowards.

It is a game that particularly evolved with the advent of income tax which was put in initially as early as the eighteenth century on a supposedly temporary basis to finance the massive government expenditures associated with the then current wartime efforts.

The allure of the game captured men’s imagination and so they have invented innumerable opportunities to play, always justifying it as a necessary evil, with their chosen enemy as their accomplice.

And politically the scourge of war games is hard to stop because it bypasses a true democratic process by using its venal appeal directly to the hapless public.

But now in the face of the climate emergency, the game of war has become prohibitively expensive. It is impossible, in so many ways, to continue to play the game of war and to be able to successfully address the climate emergency at the same time.

These two phenomena are assaults on the survival of the human species and yet as Canadians, out of our fear of the insane bully Donald Trump, we have voted in a prime minister, Mark Carney, who believes in none of these things. Rather he is gutting all climate change measures and has committed the Canadian taxpayers to pay the American weapons manufacturers the outrageous sum of five per cent of our annual GDP because Carney, despite all his window dressing, is truly at heart a militarist.

But Carney’s Liberals are only a minority government. As we have seen Canada and the rest of the world now have literally everything at stake at this juncture in history. So let us get rid of this very dangerous government dressed in sheep’s clothing. Let us do what is in Canadians’ interest and our own self-preservation. Let us take what has been denigrated by the mainstream parties, who themselves have only promoted environmental degradation and war games, and instead seize the moment that is emerging. 

Avi Lewis, who comes from a highly esteemed pedigree including his father, Stephen Lewis, a revered Canadian UN ambassador and past successful NDP leader of the province of Ontario, and his late grandfather David Lewis, the highly successful national leader for the NDP. With his wife, Naomi Klein, a world renowned socially active author and with many others Lewis created the Leap Manifesto, an authoritative document that clearly outlines how to rid Canada of its militarism and instead invest these massive funds into protecting the environment and into our sacred social programs. 

Lewis is a talented bilingual orator and has become a well-known Canadian media figure who is known for his incisive cross examinations of key political figures. He has also spent his time working to realize and develop the vital paradigm shifts that are the nuts and bolts of the Leap Manifesto. 

As of this writing Lewis is the odds-on favorite to win the national NDP leadership nomination in my opinion.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani, at age 34, is a highly progressive American politician who has shocked the world and the American political establishment by coming out on his own steam to win the election that has made him the mayor of the largest city in the United States, New York City, and ever since America has never looked back.

Canada also deserves our own ‘Mamdani Moment’. Let us get rid of Carney and his Liberals and their polluting war-like ways.

Let us make Avi Lewis the next Canadian prime minister, one who will put the end to war games and free up our resources for a healthy environment and the government programs that we all cherish. 

This article is dedicated to the memory of the author’s recently deceased wife Rhona Leith.