(Thyssen-Krupp Marine Systems type 212 submarine [Kongsberg])

This month Canada faces its first large-scale military procurement decision following yet another decade of darkness, when very little was achieved. Which submarines should we acquire to meet our current strategic requirements?

This is an opportunity to acquire a first-rate core capability — after more than a century of fragmented, politicized outcomes for our underwater fleet. After all, Canada’s first submarines were bought in 1914, not by Ottawa, but by BC under premier McBride in response to a German U-boat scare in the Pacific. Despite building a massive surface fleet during the Second World War, Canada spent that conflict mostly crewing and commanding British submarines.

In the postwar era, distinguished naval officer Vice Admiral Harry DeWolf proposed, as chief of the naval staff for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), that Canada acquire a nuclear-powered submarine fleet. His proposal was declined in 1960 on grounds of very high cost and US reluctance to share nuclear technology.

DeWolf pivoted his support to a Canadian surface fleet specializing in anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Canada nevertheless acquired three British Oberon-class diesel-powered submarines in the 1960s, as well as four Victoria-class boats starting in 1998. During the Cold War Canada bought two US Navy submarines.

On June 6^th, 1987 the government released a white paper calling for ten to twelve Canada-class nuclear-powered attack submarines. In a speech to the United Nations in December 1988, Soviet communist party general secretary Gorbachev announced unilateral troop reductions in Eastern Europe and an end to the interventionist Brezhnev doctrine. The second proposal for nuclear-powered Canadian submarines was cancelled in the April 1989 budget due to rising deficits, the end of the Cold War and shifting priorities — a ‘peace dividend’, as it was then termed.

Today’s Canadian patrol submarine programme represents a substantial opportunity to launch a capability that will serve Canada’s long-term strategic interests. It was encouraging to learn on October 30^th, 2025 that RCN commander Vice Admiral Angus Topshee considered both short-listed designs to be “excellent” — and suitable to meet Canada’s requirements.

Now we need to decide which submarine’s military capabilities are superior in order to get on with the hard and urgent task of commissioning a fleet of up to twelve new vessels. Four factors should make the choice very clear.

In terms of stealth, specialized features including a diamond-shaped, non-magnetic hull for active sonar defeat, as well as fuel-cell quietness, make the German-made ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) type 212 among the stealthiest diesel-electric/air independent propulsion (AIP) boats in the world, often matching or exceeding top nuclear-powered general-purpose attack submarines for low acoustic profile when moving slowly or submerged under battery power. The type 212A has been described as “undetectable by contemporary passive sonar”; the newer type 212CD, which Canada would be acquiring, is marketed as “quieter than snowfall.” The Korean-made KSS-III is simply less stealthy.

As for Arctic and high latitude conditions, the German-made type 212CD has been deliberately developed to meet Norwegian and German requirements for operations in the North Atlantic and Arctic. The 212CD’s non-magnetic steel, compact size, superior under-ice performance and ability to surface through thinner ice gives the TKMS design a ‘silent loitering’ profile the KSS-III cannot match. The 212CD has Kongsberg mine-avoidance/navigation sonars and echo sounders optimized for polar environments that enhance this hunter-killer role. It also has a longer continuous submerged time than the KSS-III due to more efficient fuel-cell AIP.

In performing anti-submarine warfare (ASW) tasks — a major focus for any expanded Canadian subsea fleet — the 212CD’s advanced sonar suite (including bow/conning tower arrays, large-aperture passive flank arrays and towed arrays, as well as the sonars and echo sounders mentioned above) make it a superior ‘ambush predator’. The German design also features integration, propulsion, endurance and weapons systems optimized for northern/Arctic choke-point operations, giving it clear advantages in this harsh environment, contributing further to mission success and survivability.

Finally, the 212CD has by definition superior interoperability with NATO and other allied forces. Korean builder Hanwha Ocean — formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering — has to date built or been responsible for 23 submarines; Hanwha has exported them only to Indonesia. Germany’s TKMS, by contrast, has built or supplied over 200 submarines over six decades to 27 navies, including Italy, Norway, Singapore, India, Turkey and South Korea.

Germany and Korea are Canada’s allies. In May 1952, a company of the Royal Canadian Regiment was deployed to Geoje island, near today’s Hanwha shipyard, to restore order in a prisoner of war camp; on May 2^nd, 1945 the Canadian parachute battalion arrived just ahead of Soviet forces in Wismar, where TKMS builds submarines today. But a design co-developed by two NATO member states specifically for Arctic archipelago operations against Russia offers a wider range of built-in operational benefits for Canada and its allies.

Those still touting the Korean proposal tend to highlight its larger size and crew, blue-water reach and potential industrial benefits for Canada in other sectors, including automotive manufacturing. These points are not directly relevant to strategic military requirements. Indeed, many advocates of the Korean KSS-III design point to its vertical launch system (VLS), a feature of their bid that could provide six to ten cells for cruise or ballistic missiles. Yet this additional option is not a stipulation of the current Canadian patrol submarine programme. In fact, a superfluous VLS capability could detract from the fleet’s ‘stealthy hunter’ role.

(NATO warships and submarines taking part in Dynamic Mongoose 2026, an ASW exercise off the coast of Norway)

One overriding consideration should seal the deal for the TKMS type 212CD design. With the return of US isolationism and impulsive unilateralism, which now often favours autocracies over allies, Europe is already bearing the main burden of military support for collective self-defence in Ukraine, as well as forward presence in the Baltic states, Romania, the Mediterranean and elsewhere. These allies are looking for signs — beyond the brigade we command in Latvia and recently increased military support for Ukraine — that Canada remains strategically committed to the defence of Euro-Atlantic space, especially as Russia’s grey zone war via sabotage, attacks on undersea infrastructure and hybrid operations continues to escalate.

In this context, a decision to procure a relatively untested Korean platform for Canada’s largest-ever submarine procurement would risk undermining the trust now underpinning the all-important coalition of the willing within NATO. By purchasing a proven capability from Europe’s leading economy, Canada would be paving the way towards deeper forms of defence industrial cooperation with the EU. We would also be enlarging a shared allied capability and enhancing NATO unity of effort. To miss this opportunity would be a blow both to our longer-term partnerships with EU and NATO members and to our reputation as a reliable ally.

In a febrile world of escalating conflicts, this decision must be guided by Canada’s urgent need for the right war-fighting capabilities and by alliance imperatives. On grounds of superior undetectability, operational seamlessness with allies, and ASW excellence, the German-made TKMS type 212CD ought to be Canada’s choice. Once this decision is made, we should return as our next long-term priority for Canada’s underwater fleet to nuclear-powered blue-water submarines, with VLS weapons and the ability to remain submerged indefinitely under Arctic ice.

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(A cargo ship in the strait of Hormuz [Amirhosein Khorgooi / Associated Press])

After 90-plus days of war, what impact have the US and Israeli air campaign and continuing naval blockade of Iranian ports had on the Khomeinist regime?

From the start, our view at The Diehard Optimist has been that allied policy in response to decades of Iranian aggression has been far too weak and incoherent.

We held this view long before the US and Israel began their June 2025 air strikes or the air and naval campaign launched on February 28^th, 2026. Our view last summer was that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had failed to end Iran’s proxy wars or its nuclear ambitions – and that Trump’s first term repudiation of JCPOA had created a void which Tehran exploited by scaling up regional aggression and enrichment of nuclear materials.

When the larger joint air campaign began on February 28^th, we were skeptical about Trump’s ability to see it through to a successful conclusion – largely because of his failure to bring allies on board; his indifference to freedom, human rights and the rule of law; and his closeness with Russia, Iran’s long-time strategic ally.

As far back as 2017 I have been calling on allies “immediately to implement political and economic sanctions against relevant state entities in Iran, Pakistan, Russia and other state sponsors of terrorism and violent extremism.”

With Assad waging genocidal war on his own people, at that time with Iranian and Russian backing, I also suggested in early 2017 that: “All available international air power should be employed to target and destroy Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other terrorist groups in Syria.”

Obviously, neither of those things — sanctions or air strikes to stop Assad —happened in 2017 or at any point during Trump’s first term or under Biden.

As a result, Iran’s axis of resistance continued to gather steam, culminating in the October 7^th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel.

Israel’s military operations since that time have cut back the military capabilities of the axis to perhaps one-third of their peak levels.

Hezbollah retains tens of thousands of fighters in Lebanon, with an arsenal of 20,000 or so rockets and missiles. But their leadership ranks have been decimated and Assad’s fall cut Iran’s land bridge to Lebanon via Syria.

Terrorist networks supported by Iran in Yemen for well over a decade remain active, but have kept attacks below a threshold that would attract renewed Saudi or UAE military engagement. Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq have been mostly integrated into state structures, prioritizing political influence over kinetic attacks. Hamas has lost most of its leadership, and is no longer capable of mounting major attacks.

Yet so long as the Khomeinist IRGC remains in power in Iran, the prospect of revived Iranian threats to Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen or other states will remain.

So what has the US-Israeli campaign achieved to date?

First, Iranian missile, ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes have been severely degraded. It would take Iran several years, without external support, to develop a deployable nuclear weapon. Iran’s arsenal of existing missiles and its capacity to produce new ones has been roughly cut in half.

Second, the regime has lost many of its top leaders, including ayatollah Khamenei. But no serious armed opposition has emerged inside Iran and the regime’s repressive capabilities on the ground across the country remain robust.

Third, the regime has not given up its nuclear ambitions. Large stockpiles of uranium enriched to various grades remain untouched by US and Israeli strikes at facilities beneath Pickaxe Mountain and elsewhere.

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(‘Putin’ yesterday with deputy premier Dmitry Patrushev, who referred to him as Pavel Nikolayevich, not Vladimir Vladimirovich, his real name)

While Ukraine seizes the initiative in the drone war and weakens Russian supply lines with targeted strikes, the inevitable Russian response is already clear.

They are escalating.

In recent days, Russia has attacked civilians in Romania with a drone. They hit central Kyiv with missiles. They are reportedly preparing a major hybrid attack on a NATO member state — possibly Estonia or Latvia, or perhaps elsewhere.

These are indeed signs of desperation, as Moscow runs out of strategic options to end the war on its terms. No one should under-estimate the scale of Ukraine’s innovation-driven achievement in the drone war, which is collapsing Russia’s on-paper numerical battlefield advantages into irrelevance.

But Moscow’s nihilistic posture is hardening. One week ago, US secretary of state and national security advisor Marco Rubio reported that peace talks had stalled and no negotiations were underway.

For the first time in well over a year, the Kremlin cannot count on its prize asset in the White House even to try to impose Moscow’s will on Ukraine or its allies.

If a compliant US cannot deliver, the Kremlin will try increased military force. Mobilization of a million soldiers. Strikes against Ukraine. A hybrid operation to divide NATO. By applying enough pressure, Moscow seeks to bring Europe to heel. They assume that, with the help of online legions, a Trump will be elected in France, Germany, the UK — or all three. Then Ukraine will break.

The Kremlin has always thought this way about this war.

All of them wanted to win back Ukraine by corruption, sabotage and subversion.

Doubting a full-scale invasion would succeed, a hard core tried to talk Putin out of it in late 2021 and early 2022.

Now the same group blames Russia’s ‘loss’ of Armenia, Hungary, Moldova and Syria — plus the weakening of allies in Iran and Venezuela — on Putin’s pig-headed move.

They are determined not to make the same mistake twice.

They still aim to seize remaining areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts not yet occupied by Russian forces — and ultimately all of left-bank Ukraine and Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline — only after critically weakening Ukraine’s allies and partners as a prelude to defeating Ukraine itself.

These may be pipe dreams, but they animate the Kremlin’s current masters.

This hard core still believes Trump and Xi will save them. They expect pro-Russian Slovakia to be joined by other EU members with pro-Kremlin affiliations. They are confident Khomeinist Iran will prevail because Trump always turns tail.

They are returning to the game they would have pursued if the full-scale 2022 invasion had not taken place: a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, political corruption and undermining democracy to weaken NATO and its members.

Who are ‘they’?

Nikolai Patrushev and his colleagues in the Kremlin’s long-term Chekist brain trust.

They’ve been running the country for nearly 30 years and aren’t about to stop now.

They are also trapped.

Trapped in delusions about an impending collapse of Euro-Atlantic democracy.

Trapped in lies told by commanders who claim victories for Russian forces on the front in Ukrainian Donbas and elsewhere that have not happened.

Trapped in unrealistic assumptions about the resilience of Moscow’s war economy.

Trapped in complacency about the willingness of Russians to die for a cause most already know is irredeemably lost.

Trapped behind the facade of a double that cannot yet be discarded because peace on Russia’s terms has not been achieved.

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(Separatist activists at a May 3rd pro-US rally in Edmonton)

Two major factors have brought Canada to the point where an Alberta separatist movement is consistently making headlines across the country.

The first one has a long history.

Albertans (and others in western Canada) have always reacted strongly to policies made in Ottawa that did not serve their interests.

The United Farmers of Alberta, which governed the province from 1921 to 1935, was a direct reaction to the National Policy of Sir John A. Macdonald, which created a captive market for eastern manufactures. The failure to achieve reciprocity with the US denied Alberta farmers a lucrative outlet for grain and other crops.

The Alberta Social Credit Party, in government from 1935 to 1971, was a response to Ottawa’s late adoption of Keynesianism in the Great Depression. Aberhart and Manning offered their own schemes to put money in the pockets of Albertans and save farmers from bankruptcy. Servus Credit Union — the largest in Canada today — and Alberta Treasury Branches (now ATB Financial), founded in 1938, are contemporary institutions that grew our of that era.

By penalizing Alberta for its oil wealth, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s National Energy Policy fuelled alienation and populism across western Canada, becoming one of the key triggers for the founding of the Reform Party of Canada in 1987.

Today a legitimate new grievance has arisen because of federal government policies championed by Justin Trudeau after 2015 that seriously constrained the growth of Canada’s oil and gas sector.

In concrete terms, Canadian oil production in 2015 was about 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd). Today it is about 1.5 million bpd higher, at 5.2 million bpd.

In 2015, the United States produced 9.4 million; today it produces 13.6 million bpd — a gain of 4.2 million bpd.

Over a decade oil production grew faster in the US than in Canada.

But if Canada had not had industrial and consumer carbon taxes; if we had not banned new pipelines, refineries and tanker traffic on the Pacific coast; if we had reduced the discount on Alberta oil by opening new markets; if we had not triggered the largest capital exodus in Canadian history, estimated by RBC to total $1 trillion — Canada might easily be producing 2.0 million bpd more oil today.

The current price for West Texas intermediate crude is US $91 — or $125 Canadian. So $250 million per day in exports was lost to Canada over the past decade.

That means $91 billion in exports was lost per year. With $2.30 in total economic impact for every dollar in exports, Canada lost over C$200 billion in annual GDP.

By failing to build mines, port infrastructure and LNG export capacity over the same period, the total national opportunity cost was likely over C$350 billion — well over ten percent of today’s nominal GDP of C$3.24 trillion.

If Canada had retained a competitive tax and regulatory system over all sectors of our economy, our GDP today would almost certainly be far higher.

Canadian GDP per capita would be, on average, ten or even 20-30 percent higher.

The most direct, most brutal impact of this punitive policy was in Alberta.

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(The effigy of a Jewish man with a noose around his neck, Montreal, May 2026)

(Continued from our previous essay)

Most historians agree Hitler and the Nazi regime were motivated to wage wars of conquest at least partly by hatred of Bolshevism and rivalry with the British empire and the United States. But from the start, the primary goal of Nazi Germany was to restore the empire it had lost in 1918 and destroy the Jewish people.

In fact, they saw these objectives as inter-linked. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact made Stalin’s USSR a key enabler of the Holocaust, which intensified dramatically after the Nazis had occupied most of western Europe.

By 1945, the Jewish population of the USSR had fallen to about 2.3 million. It stayed at this level until 1959, when it began to fall again.

By 1971, only 2.1 million Jews were left in the Soviet Union. In the 1970s and 1980s, about 300,000 emigrated. After 1988, about 1.7 million more left.

Most went to Israel, but also the US, Germany and other countries.

Today Russia has a remaining core Jewish population of only 132,000.

Consider the scale of this decline. From a peak of about five million Jews living mostly in the Pale of Settlement around 1900, Russia’s Jewish community has fallen back to being just over half the size of Toronto’s.

Pinchas Goldschmidt, the Swiss-born chief rabbi of Moscow since 1993, resigned and left Russia in 2022, shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

What does this mean? As we rightly work to ensure Holocaust remembrance continues for future generations, we often forget the role that the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia have played as primary drivers of Anti-Semitism, enablers of pogroms and the Holocaust itself.

From the time of the partitions, Russia placed stringent restrictions on Jewish life. Starting in the early 1880s, it has been convulsed by imported and self-inflicted Anti-Semitism in times of peace, war, revolution and dissolution on a scale that has that reduced the Jewish population of Russia, once home to half the world’s Jews, to two percent of its level in 1900. Far less than one percent of the world’s Jews now live in Russia. Why? Because Russia remains the world’s most prodigious source of Anti-Semitic disinformation, policy and propaganda.

In fact, it is fair to say that the two greatest sources of Anti-Semitic ideology and violence for the past 150 years have been Russia and the Nazi regime.

The Nazis were defeated in 1945. But Russia continues to fuel Anti-Semitism through state propaganda, active measures and support for terrorism.

In pursuing this indescribably vile and dangerous agenda, Moscow’s main ally since 1979 has been Iran’s Khomeinist regime, still dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

Today’s resurgent Anti-Semitism in Toronto and around the world is mostly stoked by deliberate programmes of online hate speech backed by Russia and China, as well as activists with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a banned entity.

This systematic campaign of disinformation has obscured, for many, the reality of Iran’s aggression, proxy wars and state sponsorship of terrorism.

It sustains the myth in Europe and Canada that UNRWA was a humanitarian agency serving Palestinians, rather than a thoroughly compromised front for Hamas.

It has made it ‘fashionable’ to be Anti-Zionist — even though Canada spearheaded the postwar establishment of Israel as a vibrant democracy and homeland for Jews in response to the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust.

This massive disinformation has left our authorities so far unwilling to end Anti-Semitic hate speech, incitement or violence in Montreal, Toronto and elsewhere. Instead our governments fail to act to prevent deliberate targeting of people and institutions because they are Jewish — when they could do much more.

Five years before my father was born a riot took place in Christie Pits after Torontonians who sympathized with the Nazi cause unfurled a huge Swastika flag at a baseball game where one of the teams was predominantly Jewish.

Beyond Protestant-Catholic violence around the annual Orange Day parade, that riot may have been Toronto’s most “shameful episode” — in the phrase of Marcus Gee’s foreword to The Riot at Christie Pits by Cyrill Levitt and William Shaffir.

As Gee added in the 2018 revision to his foreword, “It was also the dawn of something new and really quite wonderful. It is no exaggeration to say that the city where Jew and Gentile once beat each other bloody is now the hope of the world.”

Those words could not be written today.

Beyond eight cities in the US and four in Israel, Toronto is one of four more cities — the three others are Buenos Aires, London and Paris — that are home to the world’s largest Jewish populations.

We are the only one whose motto is ‘diversity is our strength’.

Yet today we are failing our Jewish neighbours and fellow citizens.

We have left them and the entire Canadian population unprotected from hate speech backed by a hyper-aggressive Russian state. We have left them and our city vulnerable to violence orchestrated by terrorist and criminal networks backed by Iran, whose operatives continue to organize in Canada on an alarming scale.

Today’s Anti-Semitism in Canada deserves a much firmer response from all levels of government — as well as from law enforcement and the justice system.

We have made Toronto a city where people of all backgrounds are free to celebrate their ethnicity, culture and religion; to choose their gender identity and sexual orientation; to embrace indigenous and immigrant heritage; to explore art, social perspectives, political views and human values of limitless range. But we only achieved this by standing firm against hate.

I’m not sure what my father would say about what our Jewish friends are going through in Toronto today.

For a start, I know he would be agog, stunned and angry — just as many Canadian Jews, their friends and allies are bewildered, disoriented and frightened.

Standing up to this current wave of Anti-Semitism is a new test for Toronto and for Canada. Standing against Anti-Semitism is a hallmark of civilization. Allowing, appeasing or apologizing for it are signs of decline and failure.

We will not defeat war, aggression or bullying in the world by ignoring them at home.

We must end the scourge of Anti-Semitism now.

Torontonians and Canadians must show that hate speech has no place in our society; that the lessons of the Christie Pits riot and None Is Too Many policy of the 1930s and 1940s were learned once and for all; that Russia and Iran are today’s aggressors, seeking to destroy Ukraine, Israel and all democracies; that Israel and Ukraine are historic and enduring allies, friends and partners with an inherent right to collective self-defence that deserves our full support.

Those who celebrate Al Quds Day; chant ‘globalize the Intifada’ at intersections; scream ‘death to Israel’ in Jewish neighbourhoods; or hang Jewish men in effigy in the streets of Montreal have unveiled today’s Swastika flag.

Our response today must be very firm.

Russia and Iran are waging wars in Europe, Asia and Africa. They are simultaneously stoking extremism to polarize our societies and debase our response.

The roots of Anti-Semitism are deep and horrific. In 1939, hatred of Jews was a primary motive for aggression that quickly became a world war.

Russia and Iran are trafficking in such hate again today. We need to show the courage and wisdom to confront and end it here in Canada — and to defeat Russian and Iranian aggression abroad. Failure to do so will put us rapidly at risk of wider conflicts at home and overseas.

Russian chauvinist aggression has always been fuelled by Anti-Semitism, just as Nazi ideology was. Since 1979, Iran has given Moscow a new set of capabilities — dubbed the ‘axis of resistance’ in 2002 — for persecuting Jews.

Israel has rightly fought back, just as Ukraine under a Jewish president is battling valiantly to remove a huge part of Europe from the charnel house that the Russian and Soviet states have been over centuries for Jewish and other minorities.

Canada needs to take swift action against Anti-Semitic hate and join our allies to defeat chauvinistic Russian and Iranian aggression worldwide.

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(Part of a Toronto Voters’ List from 1949)

In the neighbourhood where my father grew up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many families were Jewish.

He would regale us endlessly with stories of his life with this wonderful, warm, caring and successful community, its many memorable characters and the distinguished mark they had left on Toronto, Ontario and Canada. A huge number of these neighbours became lifelong friends. My childhood, albeit on a different Toronto street, followed a similar pattern — filled with bar and bat mitzvahs, seders and vibrant Jewish households.

My father was born only five years after the Christie Pits riot, which took place just six months after Hitler had seized power in Germany. This jolt of violence in a Toronto park showed the reach of Anti-Semitic Nazi ideology in 1933.

Like most Canadians, we grew up celebrating Canada’s role in ending Nazi tyranny — vowing never to allow the hate speech that led to the Holocaust ever to take root again.

My father died a few months’ into the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He did not live to see the October 7^th, 2023 terrorist attacks that plunged Toronto, Canada and most democratic societies into a dark period of renewed Anti-Semitism, unprecedented since the 1930s.

Very sadly, Anti-Semitism in Europe, North America and worldwide has been on a steady upward trajectory since the late 2010s.

After October 7th, 2023, it spiked almost uncontrollably.

According to B’nai Brith Canada, the number of Anti-Semitic incidents across Canada — including harassment, vandalism, and violence reported via hotlines, monitoring, and other sources — rose from about eight per day in 2022 to 20 per day now.

Statistics Canada and the Toronto Police Service report that hate crimes directed against Jews or Jewish institutions now represent between 70 and 80 percent of all religiously-motivated hate crimes committed in Canada and in Toronto.

Think about what this means. Put aside for a moment your views on the Israel Defence Forces, prime minister Netanyahu or Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose appalling antics this week have been rightly condemned.

The cruel and dispiriting reality is that Canadian Jews are facing abuse, harassment and often violence because of the actions of the state of Israel.

No other Canadian community today faces such open and widespread expressions of intolerance. Iran recently killed tens of thousands of civilians. Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, raining hellfire down on civilians every day. The People’s Republic of China is trampling the rights of Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnocultural groups, as well as democratic activists in Hong Kong.

Yet Iranian, Russian and Chinese Canadians do not face open expressions of hatred or intolerance on anything close to this level for the crimes of those states.

Why is this? It is far too convenient to cite Anti-Semitism’s long history, and note its resurgence after the October 7^th attacks and ensuing conflict in Gaza.

The reality is that hate speech and large-scale hate crimes do not arise out of thin air.

The current wave of virulent Anti-Semitism in Canada and elsewhere is being promoted by online hate propaganda campaigns mounted by Russia, China and Iran, as well as networks of operatives supported by the Khomeinist state.

Canadian governments, national security and law enforcement bodies have not done nearly enough to counter this propaganda, the networks that support it and the false narratives it has been driving.

So long as our inaction continues, the current wave of unchecked Anti-Semitism is likely to grow — forcing Jewish friends and neighbours to confront the dark forces that, in many cases, prompted them to emigrate to Canada in the first place.

Take one example. On October 21^st, 1905 Zlynka, a town then part of Chernihiv governorate in the Russian empire, was upended by an anti-Jewish pogrom.

Now in Russia’s Bryansk oblast very close to the Belarusian border, Zlynka had 812 Jews out of a total population of 5,408 as recently as 1897.

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, under the influence of extremists like the Black Hundreds, waves of Anti-Semitic hate and pogroms rolled over Russia. With the publication in 1903 of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a conspiratorial Anti-Semitic tract produced by Russian secret police operating in Paris, violence became more frequent. Russia’s defeat by Japan in a major 1904-05 war fed even more Anti-Jewish violence. More Jews decided to flee Russia.

One family that left Zlyatka was that of Judah Schumiatcher. At the urging of his son, Judah and his wife decided to emigrate in 1910 with their children. By 1911, they were in Canada. Judah died in 1922 in Calgary, where he is buried. His passing was lamented by the whole community.

The son in question took the name Morris. Born in Zlyatka on October 17^th, 1893, he became Morris Smith in Calgary, famous for launching the Smithbilt Hat Company — operating first in the Beltline neighbourhood, then in Inglewood.

Morris Schimiatcher/Smith served in the Canadian army in the Great War and a reserve unit of highlanders in the second. In 1946, Smithbilt produced the iconic ‘White Hat’ — a symbol of the Calgary Stampede, Alberta and Canadian culture ever since. Morris Smith died in Calgary in 1953.

The Schumiatchers migration from Zlynka was typical for Canadian Jews — most of whom emigrated from the Russian empire between 1880 and 1914.

Before the First World War, the Russian empire accounted for between two-thirds and three-quarters of Jewish emigration to Canada. Austria-Hungary (mostly Galicia) furnished ten to twenty percent. Others came from Romania and Germany.

Jews had never been welcome in Russia. Starting in 1791, they were confined by Catherine the Great to the Pale of Settlement — an area roughly corresponding to today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and eastern Latvia.

Outside that area — including in large cities like Moscow, Riga and St. Petersburg — Jews needed special permission to live and work. Zlynka is one of the rare towns in today’s Russia that had been within the Pale of Settlement.

Before being incorporated into Russia, Jews had flourished for centuries within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its predecessor regimes.

In 1750 — over two decades before the first of three partitions of Poland — the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth hosted the world’s largest Jewish population, amounting to 750,000 out of a global total of about 1.2 million.

By 1880 there were roughly 7.8 million Jews worldwide — about half of whom lived in Russia’s Pale of Settlement, which had previously been part of Lithuania, Poland and right-bank Ukraine. By 1897, the global Jewish population was well over ten million, with half still living in Russia.

But Jews were leaving Russia. By 1914, about two million Jews, mostly from Russia, had emigrated to the United States and Canada.

Another half million followed in the 1920s and 1930s.

By the time the world’s Jewish population reached its peak of almost seventeen million in 1939, about ten million lived in Europe — one third in independent Poland; about three million in the Soviet Union; the rest in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Romania, the UK, France and elsewhere. Over five million Jews lived in North or South America, mostly in the US, 166,000 in Canada.

By 1939 Zlynka had only 432 Jews. Most were killed in the Holocaust of bullets during the post-1941 Nazi occupation. Only a tiny handful survived the war.

Even with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947 and the flourishing of postwar Jewish populations in the United States, Canada and elsewhere, the global Jewish population is about sixteen million — one million less than in 1939.

The Holocaust continues to cast a long and awful shadow.

(To be continued)

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(Marshal Zhukov arriving on Red Square on June 24th, 1945 riding Kumir (‘Idol’), a stallion from the NKVD cavalry division)

(Continued from our previous essay)

Stalin himself seems to have been almost embarrassed by the war’s legacy. Nervous about the prestige and power of the Red army in general and Marshal Zhukov in particular, he delayed a victory parade on Red Square until June 24^th, 1945.

During Stalin’s remaining years in power and those of his successor Nikita Khrushchev, no parade was held on Red Square on May 9^th.

They understood that the Soviet ‘victory’ had only emerged gradually and awkwardly from a series of unimaginable horrors. The war’s early disasters had made the atrocities of Russia’s civil war seem quaint by comparison.

Decimated by Stalin’s unrelenting purges in the 1930s, the Soviet army was totally unprepared in June 1941 for Hitler’s onslaught, which sliced quickly through all of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, as well as the most populated areas of European Russia, to reach the Volga and Caucasus in the south. In the north, Nazi forces encircled Leningrad, which was brutally starved into near-submission.

The Nazis raised their flag on Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, on August 21^st, 1942. By November, they had taken the city of Vladikavkaz.

Soviet forces suffered hideous defeats. To keep soldiers from deserting en masse, cruelly efficient disciplinary units under NKVD control murdered an estimated one million Soviet servicemen.

This uncomfortable history was of course ruthlessly suppressed.

But the reality was clear to tens of millions of eyewitnesses who survived. When the Red army advanced, it left devastation, famine and sexual violence in its wake. Astonishing numbers of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Poles and others nevertheless took up arms to oppose or resist Soviet forces, knowing conquest by Moscow would only mean a new subjugation.

For all of these reasons, full Soviet military parades took place on Red Square after 1945 only on three occasions, all major anniversaries, in 1965, 1985 and 1990.

It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that May 9^th ‘victory day’ parades on Red Square became an annual event.

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Much ink was spilled in recent weeks over Moscow’s fascist parade on Red Square, which for the first time this year lacked military hardware of any kind and had to ask Kyiv’s permission to proceed without fear of Ukrainian drone attacks.

A fundamental issue remains unresolved: what kind of victory was won in 1945?

Certain features are clear enough. By late spring 1945, western Europe had been liberated — mostly by American, British, Canadian and French armies. They defeated Nazi occupiers in Italy, France, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, as well as in Greece and most of Germany, By May 8^th, the Nazi regime lay in ruins.

By late summer, Japan had also been defeated, which liberated many more countries and territories. These are the victories we celebrate on May 8^th in Europe and on August 15^th and September 2^nd in Asia. For many independent states freed by allies from Nazi or Japanese tyranny, these anniversaries meant an end to violence and repression and the start of democratic renewal.

However, the Soviet Union and Russia never celebrated these anniversaries. Stalin did not see the Nazi surrender at Reims on May 7^th, which was effective on May 8^th in western time zones, as sufficient.

At his insistence, a second instrument of surrender was signed in the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin late on May 8^th, when Moscow was already in the early hours of May 9^th. Stalin announced this formal victory to the Soviet people later that day.

This was much more than ceremonial one-upmanship. By carving out a moment in history in which Soviet commanders would have pride of place, Stalin aimed to demonstrate that without the scale and sacrifice of the Red army, the Nazi regime would have remained in power. He wanted to be seen as Europe’s pre-eminent conqueror. In all subsequent ideology and propaganda, Moscow sought to ensure the lion’s share of credit for Nazi defeat went to the Soviet Union.

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The only real debate behind the scenes in Moscow is about who will take over from ‘Putin’ — the exhausted lookalike who never really filled the space left by Putin but was a convenient placeholder for feuding factions over three years.

All signs indicate this interregnum is coming to an end.

What are those hints? The public profile of ‘Putin’ is in sharp decline. He said very little about the US-Israeli war against Russia’s ally Iran, or Trump’s naval blockade. Russia lost its main proxy in Europe. Moscow’s Afrika Corps is playing defence in the Sahel. Ukraine’s deep strikes are decimating Russian refineries and ports. Rumours of bunkers and coups, likely stoked by the Kremlin itself, are back.

The double’s schedule is thin. Since the start of this month, his only public appearances have been with a truck plant director and the head of Mordovia, an impoverished republic of 800,000 in the Volga basin.

On the last day of April he was ‘busy’ interviewing candidates to run Dagestan, an even poorer republic in the Caucasus decimated by recent floods. In a sign of the times, Moscow’s choice fell on yet another ethnic Russian.

‘Putin’ is not even allowed to speak himself about his regular chats with Trump, which are instead summarized on the Kremlin website by an aide.

The Soviet Union went through a period of gerontocracy in the early 1980s under a series of ageing leaders — Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko. Fascist Russia is now in an analogous period, as the Putin brand fractures and dilutes.

None of this means change is imminent. No Gorbachev is waiting in the wings.

But autocratic Moscow is at an impasse. One major obstacle continues to block the transition to a new government, and eventually a new president.

This is Ukraine’s heroic resistance to the pressure it has been under for over a year from Trump and his team, acting as conduits for Kremlin’s attempts at coercion. In a nutshell, Ukraine has refused to give up the parts of Donbas it still controls — the so-called ‘fortress belt’ — because it knows from bitter experience and centuries of history that such concessions would only feed further Russian aggression.

The Kremlin succession was supposed to happen after the war ended on Moscow’s terms. Trump’s arm-twisting and cutting of virtually all US military assistance to Ukraine was supposed to deliver this result.

Yet Trump has not delivered. Instead Ukraine has taken the initiative in the drone war, has damaged energy and military infrastructure across Russia, and is now helping Gulf states defend themselves from Iranian attacks.

As a result, any new Russian president would take office in conditions of growing domestic penury and repression. The Russia internet has been heavily restricted. Bank accounts are facing confiscation. National mobilization to cover battlefield losses may see over 300,000 young men conscripted as early as this month.

All of this has led to a new ‘battle under the carpet’ — a Russia idiom widely used to refer to power-brokers scrambling for advantage behind closed doors.

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(British prime minister Tony Blair with Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Putin at the Mariinsky theatre in St. Petersburg on Saturday March 11th, 2000. The performance was a premiere of Prokofiev’s War and Peace, a four-hour opera adapted from Tolstoy’s novel that was directed by Mariinsky director Valeriy Gergiev, a Putin fanatic, later a fierce supporter of Russia’s genocidal invasions of Ukraine.)

Democracy has been backsliding for two decades. Large-scale conflicts are multiplying. International trade and energy markets are in crisis. Direct investment — beyond AI — is in a slump. How did we get here?

The roots of today’s malaise can be traced back to four major mistakes — all made at the very start of this century. All of today’s major threats — authoritarianism, aggression, economic nationalism — have their origins in 2000-01.

The first mistake was allied misreading of Vladimir Putin. President Bill Clinton had met him on September 12^th, 1999 — when Putin was still only prime minister — at the APEC summit in Auckland, New Zealand. This was in the middle of the false-flag apartment building bombings, organized by Putin’s crony Patrushev, that terrorized Russia, were blamed by the Kremlin on Chechens, and propelled Putin to the presidency as a ruthless wartime leader.

It was Tony Blair who made the cardinal error. He accepted an invitation floated by, as senior MI6 officers later confirmed, a senior Russian intelligence official. As a result, Blair was in Russia on March 10-11^th — just over two weeks before Russia’s March 26^th presidential elections. He praised Putin effusively, calling him “impressive” and “highly intelligent” — someone who “wants to modernize his country.”

This helped Putin win. It also blunted allied criticism of Moscow’s genocidal war in Chechnya for which the UK provided significant military exports to Russia. Putin visited the UK in April, after his election victory, then again in 2001 and in 2003 for a state visit. In all, Putin came to the UK seven times as president — five times with Blair as prime minister and twice when Cameron was in office.

During Putin’s December 2001 visit Blair told Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya — murdered in 2006 for her criticism of Russian atrocities in Chechnya — that: “It’s my job as Prime Minister to like Mr Putin.” Italy, France and Germany welcomed Putin as president even more often — eleven, seventeen and eighteen times, respectively, over only twelve years. Prior to Trump hosting Putin in Anchorage last summer, the Russian president’s last visits to G7 countries were to a G8 summit in the UK in 2013 and to the fall UN General Assembly in New York in 2015.

Needless to say, the damage done by Russia to international peace and stability was seriously exacerbated by this continuous failure of G7 leaders to: (i) see Putin for what he was; (ii) deter or respond decisively to genocidal wars and invasions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Mali and elsewhere; or (iii) fully arm Ukraine.

The second major strategic mistake was allied failure to counter Iran’s proxy wars. When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon on 2000, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) doubled down on support for Hezbollah, which began to hijack the Lebanese state. In the wake of the failure of the Middle East Peace Process at Camp David, also in 2000, Arafat and the PLO became more dependent on terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), both heavily backed by Iran.

They launched the second intifada. In response to George W. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech, Iran formally launched its axis of resistance in 2002. At first, Iran’s proxy network comprised Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad’s regime in Syria and Hamas/PIJ in the occupied territories. The US-led invasion of Iraq broke Sunni-dominated Baathist power but boosted Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraq, giving Tehran an even wider range of proxies to use to disrupt and influence events across the Middle East, culminating in the October 7^th, 2023 terrorist attacks against Israel.

The third allied mistake was to welcome China into the WTO in late 2000. China did not meet WTO requirements for currency policy, rule of law, market access, transparency or non-discrimination. It still does not meet them. The hopes entertained by many in the 1990s that China would become an open society with free markets were never realized: in fact, the opposite has occurred. Instead China today is a repressive surveillance state with a top-down, mostly planned economy, which marginalizes entrepreneurs. China now relies on backward-looking mercantilist manipulation to expand exports, undervalue its currency and block imports — in effect, externalizing the costs of weak domestic demand. This approach is generating massive, untransparent levels of debt, which are unsustainable. As Michael Pettis has recently argued, this addiction to exports may end up bankrupting China. In the meantime, it has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to upgrade its military capabilities and extend its machinery of repression to support genocide at home, intimidation of dissidents worldwide, support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, weapons for Iran’s wars in the Middle East, and threats against Taiwan.

The fourth allied mistake was indifference towards the state structures enabling and hosting Al Qaida since it was founded in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1988. This relative lack of care continued after the attack on the US navy destroyer USS Cole on October 12^th, 2000, when it was refuelling in Aden, Yemen, which followed bombings of US embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people and injured over 4,500. The USS Cole incident came as the Clinton Administration was winding down ahead of November 7^th US presidential elections. Ironically, the incoming Bush Administration did not adopt a strategy for countering Al Qaida until September 10^th, 2001.

(Port side damage to the guided missile destroyer USS Cole as photographed on October 12th, 2000 [US Navy/AFP])

Disregard of Al Qaida was quickly replaced by neglect of Pakistan’s role. When the US responded to the 9/11 attacks, the military focus became Afghanistan — though Osama Bin Laden had crossed into Pakistan’s Kurram agency on December 16^th, and remained there until killed by US special forces on May 1^st, 2011. Al Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri also fled to Pakistan early on, surviving to return to Taliban-held Kabul in 2021, where he was killed by a US strike in 2022. The failure to counter Pakistan’s systematic support for Al Qaida and the Taliban led to the failure of the US-led mission in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power, with Pakistan’s full support, in 2021. The final phase of Pakistan’s military campaign in support of this objective began exactly five years’ ago today.

These mistakes had far-reaching consequences. Complacency towards Putin led to growing European and British energy dependence on Russia — the proceeds of which fuelled Moscow’s wars of conquest starting in 2008. Appeasement of Iran and Pakistan allowed terrorism to escalate into a worldwide threat, setting the stage for the emergence of ISIS and Al Qaida offshoots in many theatres. China’s manipulation of its economy to boost exports to achieve growth despite weak domestic demand led to global imbalances that still fuel populism.

These were not small miscalculations. They were strategic decisions, with disastrous outcomes. In 2018, former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who had been in that office at the time of Blair’s visits, admitted — with considerable retrospective regret — that by orchestrating this visit the UK had been consciously aiming to help Putin win the election — as well as to promote the interests of oil giant BP. Many senior policy-makers knew that Pakistan and Iran were backing groups that killed NATO troops in Afghanistan and mounted terrorist attacks across Europe. But they were unwilling to confront this aggression. They believed such issues could be managed — until they no longer could. Generations of politicians and business leaders, especially in the US, defended commercial integration with China, while refusing to acknowledge any causal relationship between China’s inflated exports and the hardship, alienation and populism they engendered across OECD and many other economies.

The highest price of all for these mistakes was paid by Syrians, Ukrainians, Afghans, Palestinians and Israelis — as well as the citizens of dozens of other countries affected by Russian military adventures, Chinese support for autocrats or Iran’s reckless war-mongering. The UK has paid a very specific price, in the form of Brexit, for misjudging Putin and accommodating massive Russian oligarch influence over two decades. The US is still facing a reckoning in the form of Trump, whose obvious subservience to Moscow on many issues is still dismissed as a hoax by many Americans. The blows to US and NATO military prestige inflicted by Pakistan in Afghanistan; by Iran in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere; and by Russia in Syria, Libya and elsewhere have yet to be fully tallied. France, Germany, Italy and other states (including Canada) have also paid a high price for complacency in the face of escalating Russian, Chinese and Iranian hybrid attacks, which reshaped public opinion and damaged democracy.

The response to these four major mistakes was delayed by pervasive online disinformaton and polarization — mostly fuelled by China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia. In an essay published last September, we described today’s world as still paralyzed by the aftermath of these mistakes, with autocrats in the ascendant.

There are some signs that autocrats may finally be losing ground. US and Israeli military action against Iran has already curbed the capacity of the Khomeinist regime to sustain its proxy wars. But these gains could still be reversed, especially given Trump’s beholdenness to Iran’s main partner, Moscow. The solution now is for all allies to respond properly to aggression, as the US is doing with its naval blockade of Iran, and to sanction countries that sponsor aggression or distort their economies to achieve artificial and ultimately unsustainable trading advantages.

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(Taliban fighters in Kandahar, September 1st, 2021/AFP)

Tomorrow it will have been five years since Pakistan launched the final phase of its campaign to reconquer Afghanistan.

They did not carry out this campaign with regular forces. They did it with deniable, irregular troops belonging to listed terrorist groups.

The Pakistani army is organized into nine corps — five of which are based in Punjab, facing India. I Corps is in the northern areas of Kashmir, which have been occupied by Pakistan since partition. V Corps is based in Sindh.

XI Corps is based in Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, facing Afghanistan. XII Corps is in Quetta, Baluchistan, also facing Afghanistan.

(The badge of Pakistan’s XII corps, based in Quetta)

But there is another silent, unacknowledged corps. It does not wear a uniforms. It wears shalwar kameez. It carries a mixed bag of weaponry. It is not in the formal chain of command. It includes the Taliban and other terrorist groups.

These unacknowledged units report through Directorate S of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s hydra-headed equivalent of the the Soviet Union’s KGB, to the chief of the army staff (COAS).

They are the covert action arm of Pakistan’s armed forces, supporting terrorist proxies engaged in continuous combat, subversive and terrorist activities in Afghanistan, Kashmir, India, elsewhere in South Asia, the Middle East and around the world.

Five years ago this week, these assets were poised to begin their march on Kabul, violating almost every major term of a disastrous UN-supervised agreement the Taliban had signed with the Trump administration in 2020.

We should not have been surprised that this was happening. We were told at the time what was about to happen by the architect of strategic depth, Pakistan’s policy of large-scale support for terrorist proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere to compensate for a brutal defeat by India in what is now Bangladesh in 1971.

These are the words General (r) Mirza Aslam Beg wrote in a column in The Nation, a Pakistani daily, on April 20^th, 2021:

“If the foreign troops do not leave by May 1, 2021, the Taliban in any case, would launch an all out offensive to consolidate their hold over the held territories, forcing the Afghan government under siege, in towns and cities.”

And so they did, with their Pakistani sponsors (who go unmentioned by Mirza, but are very much implied in everything he writes) in full support. On May 1^st, 2021 the Taliban, Haqqani network and other groups backed by Pakistan’s army controlled much of Afghanistan’s rural hinterland. But the cities were still under the formal control of Afghan government forces numbering in the hundreds of thousands. As late as February 2021, over 9,500 NATO troops remained in the country. Afghanistan had and still has 34 provinces: as late as the end of July 2021, not a single provincial capital had fallen to the Taliban or other proxies of Pakistan’s Directorate S.

(The Taliban flag over Kabul’s presidential palace, August 15th, 2021)

Then on August 6^th Zaranj in Nimroz fell. By August 12^th-13^th, the Taliban were in Kandahar. On August 15^th, Kabul fell to the Taliban.

On September 4^th, the director general of ISI Lt. Gen Faiz Hameed — who was responsible for Directorate S and the operation as a whole — visited Kabul where he took tea in the Serena Hotel and assured the world that ‘everything would be fine’.

Why did Pakistan and its proxies succeed? Because the US was cutting off air and logistical support to Afghanistan’s national security forces. Because policy-makers in Washington and chanceries around the world stubbornly believed that a moderate Taliban would emerge, ready to engage in power-sharing with Afghanistan’s legitimate government — a legacy of twenty years of regular voting and a parliament whose lower house was over one-quarter female. Because there was no strong political pressure in Europe, North America or anywhere on governments to change course or take a strong stand against these trends. Because, to be brutally honest, allied political leadership and public support for Afghanistan and for using armed force to defend political freedoms and basic human dignity had evaporated.

The result is that, as we noted in a previous essay, we lost. Allies lost. The US lost. NATO lost. Afghans lost — almost overnight — the fragile gains of two decades.

The result has been a series of denials. The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction alleged in November 2023 that the Taliban were diverting large amounts of US humanitarian funding, as well as military equipment left behind by US forces, to support their regime, including its violent reprisals against members of the previous government.

There are persistent rumours of a secret US deal with Taliban by which Washington continues to make payments to them in return for assurances that Afghanistan will not be used as a training ground for international terrorism and that groups associated with the Taliban will not target US assets or personnel.

Given that Al Qaida’s current leadership has been inviting terrorists from around the world to train in Afghanistan, any confidential assurances given in 2020-21 would appear to have been as worthless as the paper on which they were written — like the US-Taliban agreement itself, which both Pakistan and the Taliban shredded.

None of this has prevented Trump from becoming a ‘pal’ of Pakistan’s current COAS, himself a former DG ISI for a previous phase of Taliban recovery.

Of course, to keep up appearances Pakistan has court-martialled Faiz Hameed and given him a stiff prison sentence, ostensibly for helping Imran Khan. General Bajwa, COAS as the Taliban returned to power, is apparently in poor health. The new regime is playing up the threat to Pakistan from the Taliban, TTP, ISIS in Khorasan and other terrorist groups based in Afghanistan — as if Pakistan had had nothing to do with their genesis or with sixty years of terrorist sponsorship across the region.

The Taliban regime in Kabul remains Pakistan’s proxy – just as or even more so than Assad, Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, the Houthis and Hamas have been Iran’s proxies in the axis of resistance for over two decades.

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For over a decade, Ukraine and Israel have been fighting direct aggression.

In Israel’s case, it was a threat from lethal Iranian proxies metastasizing on their borders in the aftermath of allied failures in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria — which the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did noting to address.

In Ukraine’s case, it was a direct invasion — the very fact of which Moscow denied for years — of Crimea and parts of Donbas in early 2014 by Russia using recruited agents, special forces and rebadged army units.

Amazingly (but perhaps in retrospect unsurprisingly), this surge in aggression coincided with an allied exit from combat.

US troops had left Iraq by the end of 2011. The NATO-led air mission in Libya ended even earlier — in October 2011. No allied ground forces ever deployed there.

NATO forces handed over full responsibility for combat operations in Afghanistan to the Afghan National Army (ANA) on December 28^th, 2014.

Earlier in 2014, the US and a few allies launched an air campaign in Syria against the Islamic State in Syria/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL); by 2018-19, there were about 2,000 US troops in Syria, together with sundry allied special forces. They took little action against Assad’s forces and none against Iranian proxies.

In other words, as Iran and Russia mounted existential threats to Israel and Ukraine, allied combat operations were winding down.

The US remained Israel’s strategic military partner. Starting in 2015, Canada, the UK and US launched small military training missions for Ukraine. But otherwise the victims of Iranian and Russian aggression were left to fend for themselves.

Then came the big Russian invasion of 2022. Allies boosted military support. But the US cut it off in 2025. The EU is now finally making a 90 billion euro loan available to Ukraine that constitutes a sizeable overall increase.

Yet allies have avoided military operations, let alone combat, in support of Ukraine.

When Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7^th, 2023 — partly to distract from Ukraine — allies provided little direct support to Israel outside existing channels.

Apart from partial interdiction of a few Iranian drones and missiles, allies stayed out of this conflict. Canada and others have even curbed military exports to Israel.

This decade of military inaction started to change last June when the US joined Israel in a twelve-day air campaign to destroy Iranian military and nuclear sites.

On February 28^th, 2026 Israel and the US launched a five-week operation that killed Iranian senior leaders, destroyed most of their navy, and seriously damaged the capacity of the Khomeinist regime to pursue ballistic missile, nuclear weapon, uranium enrichment, drone, air defence or other military programmes.

On April 13^th, the US blockaded Iranian ports.

The Diehard Optimist has been sceptical from the start about the Trump Administration’s Iran strategy. We doubted that a president so in thrall to the Kremlin could curb or prevent, in any enduring way, a Russian ally’s ability to pursue proxy wars or aggression in other forms.

We had observed the TACO trade, and were glad it applied to Canada and Greenland as well. We were not aware — until very recently — of Trump’s hawkish views on Iran from the 1980s, dating all the way back to the 1980 hostage débâcle.

Be those circumstances as they may be, the US has now re-entered combat against a major aggressor on a scale we have not seen for well over a decade.

This military campaign so far has not been flaky or impulsive. It has reflected competent military planning by the Pentagon and CENTCOM. So far it has devastated Iran’s military and war-fighting capabilities.

Now the blockade is devastating their economy.

We have not seen naval blockade of one or more country’s ports or shipping on such a scale since the 1990 Gulf War or the 1962 US naval quarantine of Cuba.

By way of comparison, the blockade of Venezuela earlier this year involved one carrier strike group — about a dozen warships in total.

The 1962 operation in Cuba was much larger, as were operations in the Persian Gulf in the 1990s, which continued for over a decade after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. The US now has three carrier strike groups supporting its blockade of Iran.

The US position is stronger partly because US oil production is eight million barrels per day higher than in 2010, making it the world’s top producer.

What will be the result of this blockade?

The first goal should be to end Iran’s external aggression, including its nuclear ambitions. The second should be to end domestic repression in Iran. The third should be to set conditions for a new regime that unlocks the potential of this great country and its people. Will any of these goals be achieved?

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(St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv built in 1011)

For Moscow, lies are weapons of war.

For several years after 2014, Russia pretended it was not invading Ukraine. In 2022 feeble fibs about NATO and ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ presaged a larger onslaught.

Only a dwindling number of people — including Bulgaria’s next prime minister — still believe such fabrications. They aim to deflect, distract and exhaust.

The reality is that the Russian empire conquered territories now constituting Ukraine starting in the mid-seventeenth century. By the time of the third partition of Poland in 1795, Moscow had absorbed left- and right-bank Ukraine (including the Cossack Hetmanate), Volhynia, Crimea and southern coastal areas. Only Eastern Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia remained under Austrian control.

Even under Russian and Austrian suzerainty, Ukrainian, Crimean, Polish, Galician, Ruthenian, Jewish, Belarusian, Greek, Romanian, Cossack, Transcarpathian Hungarian and other identities still flourished. But sovereign control of Ukraine lay mostly in Moscow and, after 1712, in St. Petersburg.

After 1815, Russia’s tsar became king of Congress Poland.

Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians and others rose up against Moscow at regular intervals over two centuries of domination.

In 1917, Ukrainians proclaimed an independent republic. In 1991, they regained full independence, which they have been defending ever since.

Moscow is embarrassed by this tortured history. So they try to re-write it. In July 2021 — less than a year before the full-scale invasion — Putin published a pseudo-intellectual ‘article’ on “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”

This fascist manifesto was meant to cloak his obsession with reconquering Ukraine in a veneer of historical respectability. As with all tracts by autocrats bent on retaking lost territories by force, it is a load of cliché-ridden, propagandistic palaver.

Its vacuousness also explains why Ukraine is winning. Putin claims Ukraine is predestined by culture, ethnicity, language and religion to be subordinate to Russia. He ascribes all moments of Ukrainian autonomy to foreign hands — Europeans (usually Poles, Lithuanians or Germans), or after 1991, Americans.

These claims are just another deceitful confection.

They are anchored in one central assertion, which has a very long provenance. As the Kremlin ‘article’ puts it: “Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe.”

So what was ‘Rus’ — or Київська Русь in Ukrainian?

It was a principality founded by Norse/‘Varangian’ traders from what is today Sweden who settled at Novgorod before making Kyiv their capital around 882.

Under Grand Prince Sviatoslav, Kyivan Rus conquered the Khazar Khaganate, whose rulers were Jewish with a capital near Astrakhan, around 965.

Under Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise (978-1054), who ruled for 35 years, Kyivan Rus had a claim to be Europe’s largest state.

Kyiv was one of Europe’s largest cities. Yaroslav’s daughters married kings of Norway/England, Hungary and France. Over two centuries, members of the Rurikid clan entered over 60 marriages with European royal households.

Agatha, another daughter of Yaroslav, probably married an exiled member of the English royal house of Wessex in Hungary. She became the mother of Saint Margaret of Scotland — ancestor to every subsequent Scottish monarch save one.

These ties are detailed in ‘The Ruling Families of Rus’ – a 2023 book by Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski. It builds on a 2013 work by Raffensperger — ‘Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World, 988-1146’.

For obvious reasons, today’s Kremlin fascists have a hard time accepting that Kyivan Rus became a major European power before Moscow was even founded. In 880, ‘Rus’ was a group of Norse warriors; by Yaroslav’s time, it was a Slavified state — decades before Moscow was hewn out of the boggy forest.

In Kyivan Rus, Moscow had no role. Less than a century after Moscow’s founding, it was sacked by the Golden Horde — as were cities like Vladimir and Kyiv itself.

Kyiv regained its freedom relatively quickly, when Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania defeated a Tatar force in 1362-63.

Moscow continued to pay tribute to the Mongol state until 1476 and faced down Tatar military power in 1480 under Ivan III. Even then, Crimean Tatar khans sacked Moscow again in 1521 and 1571. In the sixteenth century, six other major attempts were made to take Moscow and four more in the seventeenth century.

Moscow only started to become a force in European history after the Golden Horde and the Crimean Tatar Khanate had been defeated.

Moscow launched its conquest of Siberia in the 1580s; by 1598, it controlled most of western Siberia. By the 1630s it had reached Yakutia and the Pacific.

These conquests are memorialized in the St. George’s Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace. Some territories were lost in 1917 but — by allying with Hitler and steam-rolling Churchill and Roosevelt — Stalin expanded Soviet territory.

When the USSR fell apart, and Ukraine, Belarus and other states resumed their independence, many in Moscow expected another restoration to follow in due course within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

When this did not happen, Moscow used Chernomyrdin to turn economic screws. When Ukraine still chose Europe in 2004-05, Moscow fed oligarch-led corruption, eventually installing their placeman Yanukovych in 2010.

When Yanukovych tried to eviscerate Ukraine’s cooperation with Europe in 2013, he was ousted. Moscow invaded in 2014 and again in 2022.

Only a hardened ideologue could still see ‘historical unity’ between invading Russians and the Ukrainians who have been defeating them at such great cost.

In fact, Moscow is not an heir to Kyivan Rus but rather to the Golden Horde. Moscow’s military success under Ivan III came with — in the words of the great British medievalist John Fennell — “cultural depression and spiritual barrenness. Freedom was stamped out within the Russian lands. By his bigoted anti-Catholicism Ivan brought down the curtain between Russia and the west.”

Towards the end of the 360-year era of Kyivan Rus, Galicia-Volhynia in the west and Vladimir-Suzdal in the east vied for influence, as did Chernihiv and Smolensk.

Moscow was not a factor. Free Kyiv joined the grand duchy of Lithuania. When Crimeans sacked Moscow, Kyiv was in the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth.

Yet when Ivan IV made himself tsar in 1547 and Peter the Great emperor in 1712, they claimed to rule “all Russia” or “all the Russias.”

The very word ‘Russia’ implied Moscow and Kyiv were one, as Putin absurdly argued. This claim to the Kyivan Rus legacy is both retrospective and fraudulent.

They are not one. British monarchs may have a stronger claim to be kings of France.

Moscow’s only path to Kyiv is invasion and violent irredentism. National freedom, self-determination and the rule of law are with Ukraine and Kyivan Rus.

To defeat Moscow’s aggression, Ukraine needs more support, as a decorated Canadian army officer has argued today. It should have been invited to join NATO years ago.

We need to see Kyivan Rus as a European and Ukrainian story — one that has often required defending against invaders from the east.

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(Caandian prime minister Mark Carney speaking at Davos in January 2026)

Canadian Diplomatic Successes 2000-25

All through this quarter century starting in 2000, Canada was cashing in on a self-declared ‘peace dividend’. With the brief exception of Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014, Canada reduced its strategic footprint.

By 2025, the regular force of Canada’s military — which had numbered 69,000 service members in 2000 — had fallen to 66,000. Canada had fewer full embassies and consulates general around the world. After recent cuts, Canada is likely to spend only about 0.25 percent of nominal GDP on aid in 2026 — roughly the same level as in 2000, and far below Pearson’ goal of 0.7 percent.

Yet despite this loss of military and diplomatic altitude — despite not having served on the UN Security Council since December 2000 — Canada did have moments of diplomatic success over the past twenty-five years.

Here are seven of them:

(i) Jean Chrétien decided to turn down the US when it requested our participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, anchoring a reputation for principled independence;

(ii) Canada committed strongly to the mission in Afghanistan, invoking article 5 in 2001, championing NATO structures in 2003 and leading the transition to combat in Kandahar in 2005, which led to military success that motivated other allies;

(iii) In 2011, Canada championed the responsibility to protect (R2P) in Libya and commanded a successful NATO air campaign, authorized by the UN Security Council, with China and Russia abstaining alongside Brazil, Germany and India;

(iv) Starting in 2009-10, Canada reduced funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency, already heavily infiltrated by Hamas, reducing it to zero by 2013-14;

(v) From 2009 to 2014, we negotiated the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that was signed in 2016 and in force by 2017. In 2012, Canada joined Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations that concluded in 2015. We signed TPP in 2016. Following the US exit from TPP during Trump’s first term, we re-signed the Comprehensive and Progression Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2018 with ten other countries.

(vi) In 2014, Canada was the principal ally pushing for Russia’s expulsion from the G7 following its invasion of Ukrainian Crimea and Donbas. We led the push for sanctions and for Russia “to get out of Ukraine.” In 2015 we deployed the first training mission for the Ukrainian army on the ground in Ukraine.

(vii) Carney sharply increased military spending in 2025, agreeing to meet new NATO goals of 3.5% of GDP on military spending and an additional 1.5% on related infrastructure. At Davos, he sketched a strategy for middle powers.

These contributions were substantial. Outcomes in Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine, would have been different, and probably worse, without Canada’s contributions.

Today’s Challenges

Yet none of these achievements has prevented the emergence of a set of interlocking threats now fueling today’s instability: Pakistan’s predatory policy towards Afghanistan; Iran’s proxy wars across the Middle East and Africa; China’s threats to the South China Sea and Taiwan; above all, Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine.

In my view, Russian aggression remains the principal threat to international peace and security today. Moscow is Tehran’s main military ally. Russia was the first country to give the Taliban regime official recognition. China’s policy on Taiwan depends on Russia’s fortunes in Ukraine.

Russian aggression is a recurring theme over the longer arc of Canadian history. Let’s compare snapshots, each a half century apart from the next. In the run up to Confederation, with Germany also uniting, Bismarck reportedly said: “The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.” By this he meant that giving Moscow a free hand to suppress Poland, Ukraine, Finland and other countries would give Prussia a free hand to deal with Austria, Denmark and France.

And so it was for several decades. Only when Bismarck was gone in 1890 did the Franco-Russian Dual Entente of 1894 begin to pave the way to world war. When Canada took Vimy Ridge in 1917, Russia was in the throes of a revolution that took it out of the war. Moscow became Germany’s de facto ally until 1941. After the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany was able to move over 40 divisions from the eastern to the western front, which may have cost allies a more decisive victory.

Fifty years later, in 1967, Moscow pivoted from Cold War-style conflict in Cuba, Germany, Korea and Vietnam to proxy wars in developing countries from Angola and Madagascar to Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. With a brief respite in the 1990s, when Moscow was fighting in Chechnya, these conflicts resumed under Putin.

Since Canadian Confederation in 1867, Russia has changed the game every fifty years. From the ‘League of the Three Emperors’ in 1873 they pivoted to worldwide communist revolution in 1917, to proxy war in the developing world in 1967, and war in Europe in 2007. Their aim remained the same: territorial expansion.

These successive reorientations of Russian aggression have literally shaped Canada. Britain’s need to respond to faltering stability in Europe was one factor driving Canadian Confederation. Our sacrifices in two world wars were larger because of Moscow’s 1917-41 de facto and later explicit alliance with Berlin. Our founding role in the League of Nations, UN and NATO was motivated by a wish to end “the scourge of war” and other acts of aggression, including Russian aggression; after all, the last act of the League of Nations in 1939 had been to expel the USSR for invading Finland. Canada’s later contributions to the war in Korea, CIDA and Afghanistan were also responses to Soviet aggression in the Cold War and the developing world, including the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Today’s Canadian military commitments in Latvia, Poland and Ukraine were made in response to a renewed Russian threat.

My favourite actual quote on diplomacy is from Talleyrand: « Il n’y a pas de principes, il n’y a que des événements. »

In the end, there is no principle governing Canadian diplomacy or international policy that says we must counter Russian aggression. Events now oblige us to do so.

Russia backed Islamist terrorism starting in the 1960s. Moscow became Iran’s partner after the revolution. Russia used the conflict in Syria to radicalize European politics and seed the political ground in the UK for Brexit. Russia worked to humiliate NATO in Afghanistan. The Kremlin used the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel of October 7^th, 2023 to divert attention from Ukraine.

My favourite quotation attributed to Talleyrand is sadly apocryphal: « L’art de la diplomatie est de prévoir l’inévitable et d’en hâter l’avènement. »

A decisive reckoning with both Iran and Russia is now inevitable. The Iranian revolution of 1979 and Russia’s loss of empire in 1989-91 unleashed waves of aggression which, if we value our institutions and way of life, must be countered.

In responding to such threats, Canada is not a minor player. If over the coming years we unlock Canada’s full economic potential, close the current GDP gap with Italy (and eventually France and the UK) and create new capabilities to act with real relevance in today’s world, then Canada will have a new opportunity.

Seven strategic initiatives could generate renewed diplomatic and political influence:

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The theme of the conference was ‘If I Only Had a DIME: Canadian National Power in the New Global (Dis)Order’. Four speakers addressed each dimension of the diplomatic, information, military and economic (DIME) rubric.

These remarks focused on the outlook for Canadian diplomatic and political influence:

(Lester Pearson, Canada’s secretary of state for external affairs until June 20th, 1957, arriving in Oslo to receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10th, 1957)

Ask almost any AI platform today for a joke about Lester Pearson and diplomacy, and you will get this one: “The chief distinction of a diplomat is that he can say no in such a way that it sounds like yes.”

Self-effacing and anodyne like Pearson himself, the online world can nevertheless not enlighten us as to when Canada’s most famous diplomat actually made this remark. It seems to be a free-floating quotation, unmoored to any particular context — perhaps from early in his career, perhaps not.

My time as a diplomat began in an era whose flavour was very different from the cordite-tinged interwar, wartime and Cold War periods Pearson had known. By 1991, the chief distinction of a diplomat was to struggle for relevance. In those days, like our military colleagues, we mostly said yes — but in a manner that did not incur future spending obligations. By the 1990s most policy-makers worshipped at the altar of free trade. Trade negotiators were larger-than-life figures. Business, investment and market economics would resolve most of the world’s problems, or so many believed — perhaps with a little help from HIPC debt forgiveness, NEPAD & the Ottawa process.

‘So how did that work out?’ is a question with which we are still coming to grips. To make a very long story short, the diplomacy of the 1990s mostly failed. Global imbalances and incompatibilities reasserted themselves. Genocide happened in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Acts of aggression multiplied.

When two decades later I became an elected politician — that profession was still relevant, if somewhat infamously so. One of Churchill’s early quotes is apt: “Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.”

Having worked as a diplomat under fire in both Russia and Afghanistan — on the other side of the Northwest Frontier on which Churchill served — I can agree politics is considerably less exciting than war. This may be simply because the results of politics are almost always deferred.

Is political death worse than death on the battlefield? The very question is absurd. But one thing is certain: the political casualty, who is only metaphorically dead, has the very real misfortune to witness the aftermath of his or her fall from grace.

We are not here to re-litigate the legacies of Pearson or Churchill, the Cold War or the mission in Afghanistan. Canadian diplomacy seems a far safer, more prosaic topic.

Except that it is not. These remarks are being made by one who is still firmly convinced that political leadership and diplomacy remain key drivers of world affairs — and that Canada has an outsized role to play even and perhaps especially in today’s landscape of hard risks and shape-shifting friends and foes.

Pearson dedicated his Nobel acceptance speech to a goal he — a true son of the manse — described as “the Empire of Peace.” His Nobel lecture focused on what he called the four faces of peace — prosperity, power, policy and people.

Pearson had seen his country make huge wartime sacrifices for peace. A generation earlier, Borden had spoken of “establishing upon permanent ideals a League for the enforcement of international right and for the prevention of future war.”

(Opening session of the Versailles peace conference, Trianon palace, January 1919)

That league had failed after only two decades. When Pearson spoke, the UN was only twelve years old, and had yet to prove itself. In his 1957 Nobel acceptance speech, Pearson acknowledged that the “determined and effective will to peace displaying itself in action and policy remains to be achieved.”

The longing for peace, as expressed by Borden, Pearson and so many others, was an old ideal — in modern form, as old as Immanuel Kant’s philosophical sketch of ‘Perpetual Peace’ published in Königsberg in 1795. The Congress of Vienna aspired to implement it. By the 1860s and certainly after the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the balance of power created by this Concert of Europe had started to fall apart.

Twice in the twentieth century new and elaborate machineries of peace were attempted — with the League of Nations, then later the United Nations. Canada was present at the creation for both.

Borden saw the League Covenant, backed by 32 states, as a solemn pledge “that not force but right and justice shall be the arbiter of international disputes.”

Yet both the League and more recently the UN failed to keep the peace.

The League’s failure heralded the Second World War, which was only ended by allied victories in Europe and Asia. How will the UN’s jarring state of disrepair be handled? How can a middle power like Canada generate and exert decisive diplomatic and political influence in this century?

To answer this question, I want to cover three issues — first, how the global order has changed since 2000; second, the high-water marks of Canadian diplomatic and political influence over the past quarter century; and third, how we might refashion our diplomacy and political influence to address today’s larger issues.

The International Order Since 2000

After the democratization and globalization of the 1990s, the turn of the millennium saw two major changes. First, a nationalist former KGB officer took over in the Kremlin. Second, Israel unilaterally withdraw from the south of Lebanon, triggering a Hezbollah ‘victory’ in May, the failure of the Camp David Summit in July and the start of the second intifada in September.

Two more events upended the global status quo the very next year.

On September 11^th, 2001, a terrorist group based in Pakistan used civilian aircraft to attack the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, sending the US and NATO allies on military manoeuvres in Afghanistan for the next twenty years.

Then on November 11^th, 2001, China acceded to the World Trade Organization. Over the next quarter century, its exports would surge from US $246 billion in 2000 to $1.9 trillion in 2011 and $3.8 trillion in 2025.

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(Field Marshal Asim Munir, who is Pakistan’s chief of the army staff, calling on Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif in November 2025.)

As the US vice president heads to Islamabad for talk with Iran, the strategic contradictions that beset this military operation from its start on February 28^th are coming home to roost.

The failure of the White House to bring allies onside in advance has now led to an open breach, which will not be easily mended.

Even as American bombs rained down on Tehran over 40 days, Trump and his team remained utterly besotted with their Kremlin friends, batting away hard evidence Russia provided intelligence to help target US service members and Gulf energy infrastructure. Far from being embarrassed, the Administration is doubling down on its backing for Russia’s genocidal occupation of Ukraine.

The Iranian people, who have suffered in countless ways since 1979, seem no closer to ridding themselves of the repressive regime that massacred thousands of them in streets and hospitals in cold blood in January.

With little to lose, the remains of the Khomeinist machinery of repression seem determined to hold international commerce hostage in the strait of Hormuz and threaten Gulf neighbours.

Given the current ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been in breach of UN resolutions for two decades, Israel has been engaged in air strikes on targets there for two days — in addition to a ground operation that began on March 16^th, which took the IDF as much as ten kilometres into Lebanon. They have almost reached the Litani river, north of which Hezbollah was required to withdraw by the terms of UN security council resolution 1701, adopted unanimously on August 11^th, 2006 in a bid to end the Israel-Lebanon war of that year.

While Iranian military capabilities have been damaged, the regime’s obdurate obsession with continuing its proxy wars remains undiminished.

Lebanon is a virtual Iranian protectorate. Hamas still exists. The Houthis are still hurling anti-Israeli hatred and violence at the world from Yemen.

As we have argued before, there will be no Middle East settlement — no peace around the Persian Gulf — until Iran’s aggression against Israel and other states is ended.

What are the prospects for success in Islamabad? In short, nil.

Iran has made unacceptable demands. The US has put forward a wish list of laudable goals with no prospect of being achieved — even in part.

JD Vance opposed the military operation against Iran from the start. With Trump, he is the flashing red light signalling this White House’s de facto alliance with Iran’s ally Russia, having just visited Budapest to help Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, the Kremlin’s top stooge in Europe, remain in power.

The host country for these talks embraces a virtual carbon copy of Iran’s playbook. In fact, they invented it years before the Iranian revolution took place in 1978-79. In Pakistan’s case, the main prize for decades of state sponsorship of terrorism, proxy wars and genocidal occupation has been Afghanistan, which Trump and Biden combined to gift to Islamabad in 2020-21. Islamabad is also China’s most important and most obsequious strategic ally.

To top things off, Pakistan’s defence minister recently posted this:

This tweet is all we need to know about prospects for peace this weekend,.

By agreeing to meet in Islamabad — the country that backed Iran’s terrorism project most staunchly since 1979 — the US is showing more strategic weakness. In the end, Pakistan was only chosen as a mediator and venue because of its army chief’s headlong, calculated effort to ingratiate himself with Trump over the past year, which we highlighted at the start of the US/Israeli air campaign against Iran.

Does the choice of Islamabad show that, as ever, Trump always chickens out (TACO)?

Yes, quite possibly.

But if Iran is an exception to the TACO principle — as Trump’s statements about Iran since the 1980s lead some to believe — then a resumption of military strikes and even operations to open the strait of Hormuz is also entirely possible.

Either way, the economic pain of Iranian blackmail in the strait of Hormuz and Iran’s hostile designs on the Middle East will remain.

Some including a former Israeli foreign minister writing in today’s Globe and Mail have gone so far as to conclude that, by repealing the principle of a Clausewitzian ‘centre of gravity’, rogue states like Iran are bound to have endless success with their asymmetric war-fighting.

The truth is more prosaic and more concrete. The Iranian regime is now enfeebled. They will only stay in power by continuing massive internal coercion. Their economy is vulnerable, with no windfall or saviour in sight.

States like Iran, Pakistan and Russia need trade. They need weapons. They depend on partners. They crave financial flows. They require technology to continue their wars of conquest and occupation in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Sanctions, embargo and enforcement actions can tip the balance against them.

All that is required is political will and unity among allies.

Both are now in short supply. But we should not give up on the only formula for responding effectively to situations of great gravity that is known to work.

Ever true to form, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy has seen this clearly. In Ukraine’s efforts to share their world-beating drone defence systems with Gulf states, in its call for more decisive to pull economic levers that would end Iran and Russia’s ability to project aggression, there is the outline of real strategy.

For now, most allies are not even naming the problem correctly.

Macron’s knee-jerk condemnation of Israel for defending itself against attacks from Lebanon — and the French president’s refusal to be remotely coherent on Iran over the past five weeks — are just the tip of the iceberg.

The vitriolic hate speech by a Pakistani defence minister, inciting the same violence Iran has been meting out for nearly half a century, will not be denounced by any allied political leader or UN official. Most media are ignoring it.

Only Pakistan army chief Asim Munir apparently had the presence of mind and clout to oblige his minister — technically Munir’s superior — to delete the offending tweet. But the damage done by waves of Anti-Semitic rancour remains.

While allies are blinded by prejudice, the US is grounded by incoherence.

While attacking Russia’s ally, this Administration sides with Moscow. When seeking an off-ramp for military operations, they turn to Pakistan — with Iran, the most intractable state sponsor of terrorism in the world today whose occupation of Afghanistan Trump eagerly facilitated in his first term.

For now, the doom loop of incoherence and under-reaction continues.

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(US vice president JD Vance visiting prime minister Viktor Orban on April 7th, 2026 — five days before Hungary’s elections. [Janos Kummer/Getty])

When Viktor Orban was first elected prime minister in 1998, he campaigned on a liberal-conservative platform for a ‘civic Hungary’. He portrayed himself as a generational alternative to bourgeois socialists who had failed the country.

When he returned as prime minister in 2010 after an eight-year break, he campaigned against the same left-of-centre establishment — this time as a national conservative. He sought a revolutionary break with weak EU leadership. He wanted “national cooperation” for work, family, order and national sovereignty.

When the 2014-15 European migration crisis broke out, fuelled by Assad’s appalling waves of violence against his own people, Orban pivoted quickly.

But every stage of his career — liberal-conservative, national conservative and anti-immigration hardliner — has had one common denominator: Russia.

In a sworn 2016 statement, Dietmar Clodo described handing one million Deutsche Marks from Semyon Mogilevich, a leading Russian mobster then living in Budapest, to Orban ahead of 1994 parliamentary elections.

In an interview this month Laszlo Kovacs, a former Budapest gang member, alleged bomb-maker and bodybuilder, described acting as a courier for Mogilevich in 1997 — just before Orban’s first win — to deliver payments of $300,000, $500,000 and even one million dollars in a single sports bag.

In recent days, we have also learned that Orban’s foreign minister routinely briefed his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on confidential EU Council discussions. They even strategized about ways to lift sanctions and block support for Ukraine.

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(Ukrainian president Zelenskyy arriving in Syria on April 5th, 2026.)

The current US and Israeli military operation aims to ensure Iran no longer poses a strategic threat. Europe, the UK and Canada are supporting Ukraine’s continuing self-defence against Russian aggression.

Yet Trump and Netanyahu see Russia as a friend. Europe, the UK and Canada failed to prevent Iran from becoming a main enabler of Russia’s aggression.

As a result, strikes against both Iran and Ukraine are happening against a backdrop of grand incoherence, as both sets of allies mostly ignore their enemy’s main enabler.

This is a recipe for continuing failure. Neither Iran nor Russia will abandon its aggressive posture unless both face uniformly strong pressure.

For now, only Ukraine has fully grasped this linkage. The same drones hitting Kharkiv and Odesa are being launched against Dubai and Doha. By offering to help Gulf states counter such threats, Ukraine is again showing leadership.

Peace in Europe and the Persian Gulf requires that both Iran and Russia lose their capacity to build, deploy and launch drones, missiles and rockets.

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(Ali Larijani, head of the supreme national security council of Iran, who was killed in airstrikes last month. [Arash Khamooshi/New York Times])

For decades, Iran has been engaged in wide-ranging campaigns of terrorism, proxy conflicts, subversion and a genocidal war against Israel. But the rules of international relations seem not to apply to them.

For example, just weeks after murdering thousands, Iran was elected vice-chair of the UN commission on social development “whose priority theme will be promoting democracy, gender equality, and ensuring tolerance and non-violence.”

Why is this?

First, the comprehensive support that Iran enjoys from China, Russia, Pakistan and other corrupt and/or authoritarian states counts for a great deal.

Yet Iran’s long-term impunity cannot be explained by support from dictators alone.

In Iran’s case, leading democracies seem to have suspended judgement. We treat Khomeinist regime violence as insensate — a series of inevitable or uncaused effects. To see why, we need to cite four interlocking factors:

Ideological capture: Parts of the academy, media, and NGO world have long framed the Islamic Republic as an authentic ‘anti-imperialist’ force resisting U.S. hegemony and Israeli power. This view goes back to the 1979 revolution itself, which some intellectuals initially romanticized. It hardened during the era of the Iraq war and post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ fatigue. Iran’s self-presentation as champion of the ‘oppressed’ (Palestinians, Shia communities, Global South) aligned neatly with a post-colonial willingness to prioritize Western sins over theocratic repression. Terms like ‘axis of resistance’ were often adopted uncritically, making it difficult to counter Hamas infiltration of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, the UN Relief and Works Agency or the government of Lebanon at all levels. This uncritical attitude was not universal — some conservative outlets, Israeli media, Gulf Arab states, and Iranian dissidents highlighted the threat — but it prevailed in media and universities.

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Iran’s sophisticated influence and disinformation apparatus: Tehran runs documented ‘soft war’ programs targeting democratic elites. The leaked post-2014 Iran Experts Initiative showed the Foreign Ministry cultivating academics, think-tank analysts, and journalists in Europe, the US, UK, Canada and other countries to place sympathetic op-eds, shape policy debates, and downplay threats — sometimes via ghostwriting. Iran operates state media (Press TV), proxies, and cyber networks that amplify ‘both-sides’ or victimhood narratives on social platforms, exploiting open democratic debate without reciprocal access. Iran also has well-known, large-scale initiatives targeting cultural, academic, student and diaspora groups.

Policy and economic incentives for ‘engagement’: European governments and the Obama administration during the post-2015 era of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) prioritized nuclear diplomacy and trade over confrontation. Highlighting Iran’s full aggression would have complicated deal-making, sanctions relief, and Airbus/Boeing sales. Post-Iraq/Afghanistan war weariness reinforced reluctance to “beat the drums” for another conflict. Realpolitik also played a role: some saw Iran as a counterweight to Sunni extremism or a market worth courting. This created a feedback loop where media echoed official talking points about ‘moderate’ factions and ‘pragmatic’ Rouhani or Zarif.

Asymmetric aggression is harder to dramatize: Unlike Russia’s tanks rolling into Ukraine or China’s South China Sea bases, Iran’s method — deniable proxies, missiles via Houthis, assassinations via cutouts — is diffuse and incremental. The Israel-Palestine framework often subsumes Iran’s role into a broader ‘cycle of violence’; Tehran’s eliminationist rhetoric and arming of proxies are downplayed. Narratives focus on protests, crackdowns and sanctions — but rarely on long-term effects on Iran’s people or the Middle East as a whole. The regime kills thousands — in January it killed tens of thousands — but rarely produces a single ‘shock’ image that sustains outrage. There is still no visual from the January 2026 state-sponsored mass slaughter of Iranian protesters analogous to ‘tank man’ on Tiananmen square in 1989. This allows narratives of ‘mutual escalation’ to persist.

In the preface to a book published in 1783, philosopher Immanuel Kant credited his encounter with the skepticism of David Hume, whom he had first read in the 1760s, with awakening him from a “dogmatic slumber”.

For too long, our political debate has given Iran’s aggression a virtual pass. The regime weaponizes Western divisions and deploys its own hybrid toolkit. It prioritizes revolutionary violence over the welfare of Iranians — and is putting the stability of the whole Middle East into jeopardy. It’s time to wake up to the reality of an aggressive, revolutionary Iran. We need to put aside dogmatism, knee-jerk anti-Americanism and resurgent Anti-Semitism to see this threat as it is.

(As US and Israeli airstrikes continue, Iran faces an internet blackout and continuing repression at all levels. [Vahid Salemi/AP Images])

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s aggression against its people, neighbouring states, Israel, the US and other democracies has never stopped. Yet Europe, the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, the Gulf states and other allies — the famous middle powers of Carney’s Davos speech — appear reluctant to confront the threat to regional security and global commerce that Iran represents. Why is this?

Let’s first recall the Khomeinist regime’s track record:

Revolution and genocide: Iran’s ideological goal is to export its theocratic revolution, eliminate Israel (”the Little Satan”) and damage the U.S. (”the Great Satan”).

Iraq and Syria: After 2003, Shia militias in Iraq killed U.S. and coalition forces. Iranian proxies in Syria triggered massive displacement, destabilizing Europe.

Armed groups: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Force built the ‘axis of resistance’: Hezbollah in Lebanon; Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen to attack shipping, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Terrorism sponsorship: The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing killed 241 U.S. Marines: Iran has been on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list since 1984. Iran has orchestrated plots against dissidents and Jewish targets worldwide.

Proxy wars and regional subversion: The axis of resistance has not been a dormant force: it has fuelled multiple wars. Iran propped up Syria’s Assad with troops, Hezbollah fighters, and militias; organized, trained and supplied Shia militias to fight U.S. forces in Iraq; and militarized Yemen via the Houthis.

Dissident killings and abductions and direct attacks abroad: For decades, the regime assassinated or kidnapped opponents in Europe and elsewhere. These operations have escalated since 2022 and are now outsourced to criminal networks to maintain deniability. Iran also conducts direct attacks against Jewish sites

Downing of civilian aircraft: In 2020, IRGC forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, killing all 176 on board; most were Canadian citizens, permanent residents or students; Tehran initially denied responsibility.

Support for Russia’s war on Ukraine and Chinese ambitions in southwest Asia: Since 2022, Iran has supplied Russia with thousands of shahed drones and ballistic missiles, with ongoing production assistance and sanctions evasion. Iran imports Russian and Chinese weaponry and supplies energy to China.

Repression and violations of basic rights: Over the past year, Iran has detained over 75,000 political prisoners. It maintains high rates of execution, including of anti-regime activists. The regime comprehensively violates the rights of women and has virtually extinguished basic political freedoms, including freedom of speech.

Cyber attacks and large-scale influence operations: Iran made large-scale cyber-enabled attempts to interfere in the 2024 US elections, which were backed by Russia and China. In fact, the only other states with comparable records of violence, hostage-taking, and hybrid warfare are China, Pakistan and Russia.

Despite this egregious litany of destabilizing actions, large swathes of media, academia, and political debate in our democratic societies treat these facts as secondary or contested. They insist on “contextualizing” them.

Far more often than in the case of Russian aggression against Ukraine, Iran’s wars — including its support for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis — are portrayed as ‘legitimate responses’ to U.S./Israeli ‘provocation’.

Media coverage and policy debates often emphasize the humanitarian impact of sanctions against Iran. Concerns about repression, terrorism or war are subordinated to hopes for nuclear diplomacy. Israel’s responses to attacks by Iranian proxies are given prominence while Tehran’s role in initiating attacks and the scale of its campaign against Israel are soft-pedaled.

In this regard, the October 7^th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel were not a watershed. While most Europeans and North Americans condemned Hamas, a high percentage subsequently viewed Israel as having used disproportionate force in Gaza. Younger people tend to see Hamas as a ‘resistance movement’ — not a brutal Iranian weapon aimed at a democratic state. Few European, British or Canadian voters are open to military action against Iran.

It is as if the shocking reality of Iran’s revolutionary goals and violence come wrapped in a blanket of acceptability, rationalization and special pleading.

Our friends at Get Fact see this as a contest of narratives, tradecraft and wills — “the war Iran is winning”. For more background on what Iran is doing to us all, please do give their excellent work a read.

How did Iran pull this off? We will delve into this question in our next essay.

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