Without skin in the game, Trudeau won’t change policy direction on Ukraine—even if it’s not working

OTTAWA—The war in Ukraine is stuck in a stalemate. There have been no notable shifts in months. By all accounts, it is destined to end either by attrition or exhaustion, unless someone steps in to broker a negotiated peace agreement. It won’t be the Trudeau Liberals. They are following a different policy path. Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never spelled out his end-game for Ukraine, deconstructing his speaking points suggests that he has three policy goals in mind: regime change in Russia, beat Russia back to the borders of 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, and establish a NATO beachhead in Ukraine. For the first goal, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly claimed on March 10 that “we’re seeing a potential regime change in Russia.” The facts tell a different story. According to Statista as of May 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is a whopping 82 per cent. This is not surprising. When a country is at war, its citizens tend to rally behind their leader, no matter how objectionable he or she may be. Oddly enough, Putin is also gaining popularity in the United States. Market research firm YouGov rates his popularity at 20 per cent, a jump from 15 per cent before the war. All indications are Putin is well poised to win the next Russian election, slated for March 17, 2024, although he has not yet declared his candidacy. From the looks of it, Trudeau’s regime change objective is probably not going to be met any time soon. Regarding the aim to beat Russia back, there, too, the Liberals are falling short. Since the war began in February 2022, Russia has held roughly 20 per cent of Ukraine’s landmass. The Ukrainian counteroffensive was supposed to make Russia retreat. That has not happened. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has conceded that the counteroffensive is going “slower than desired” and that he will not risk the lives of his soldiers just to meet international expectations, like those of Trudeau. This leaves Trudeau’s third objective: for Ukraine to join NATO. Paradoxically, this is the same argument that Russia used to justify its illegal invasion in the first place. It doesn’t want NATO at its doorstep. Trudeau is not deterred. In his June 10 speech to the Ukrainian Parliament, he committed to bring Canada’s weight to bear on matters such as Ukraine’s long-promised membership to NATO. Then he quietly added a caveat, “as conditions allow for it.” In other words, don’t count on it. Canada has sanctioned over 2,500 Russian individuals and entities. This is intended to crush Russia’s economy. Here, again, Trudeau’s policy is not bearing fruit. As reported by Reuters, in 2022, the first year of the war, the Russian economy contracted by only 2.1 per cent. Its unemployment is a record low 3.3 per cent. Its annual inflation rate is predicted to be 5.4 per cent at the end of 2023. The Russian central bank is aiming for four per cent. These metrics are comparable to G7 countries. Russia clearly has not collapsed. The rational thing to do when your goals not being realized is to regroup and reposition. But war is not about rationality, especially if you’re not doing the actual fighting. With no skin in the game, you can afford to treat it as nothing more than a public relations exercise of political boasting, much like the prime minister is doing with his rhetorical bravados to support the war “for as long as it takes.” The Liberals can all do this because they are getting a free pass in Parliament. No opposition party has questioned the efficacy of their policies on Ukraine, nor have they offered alternatives such as de-escalation or détente. This has made it easy for the prime minister to issue tweets of armchair bluster, while Russian carnage continues unabated with the people of Ukraine seemingly jinxed by Trudeau’s jingoisms. In his truculent dogma, Trudeau views the war in Ukraine as “the tip of the spear that is determining the future of the 21st century.” These exaggerations may ingratiate him with other NATO leaders when they meet in Lithuania on July 11-12, but most non-NATO countries aren’t impressed. China, Brazil, India, and the African Union have all put forth proposals for a mediation process to stop the bloodshed. Needless to say, neither Trudeau, nor his NATO counterparts, seem too interested in these proposals. Meanwhile, over 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers are now missing and thousands more are presumed dead or wounded. As of June 21, the United Nations recorded 6.3 million Ukrainian refugees scattered across the planet, with anti-Ukrainian hate speech rising sharply in places like Poland. Economically, Ukraine relies exclusively on international aid from donor countries. The World Bank estimates its economy will grow by a mere 0.5 per cent this year. The cost of post-war rebuilding in the interim has spiked to US$411 billion, more than twice the size of Ukraine’s economy of 2021 before the war. But who will stick around to help rebuild Ukraine? It probably won’t be Trudeau. Those who like to prolong wars “for as long as it takes” can only destroy things, not put them back together. Reconstruction is seldom in their vocabulary; neither is an honest reassessment of their failing foreign policies. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal government. Between 2002-21 he held senior roles in several departments, including Fisheries and Ocean Canada, Infrastructure Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat, and Public Works Canada. He has also held executive positions in the governments of Ontario and British Columbia. The Hill Times