Speak Now or Forever Lose Your Peace
Final Dispatch from NATO, Brussels
“Right now, In Saudi Arabia, the most undemocratic place on the planet, a war criminal and a convicted felon are deciding the future of Ukraine. If we are silent, it will be like Munich 1938 all over. Do we have the determination to speak out for a better world because it is being sold out now, and the American delegation is allowing this to happen.
We cannot allow this to happen.”
- Charlie Angus, NATO Meeting, Brussels, February 19, 2025
I didn’t think it would be like this. I was sure that when Donald Trump started shooting off his mouth about Ukraine and kissing up to Putin, the combined voices of NATO would speak up as a strong deterrent. When he began undermining his allies, I was convinced that Germany, the UK, France, Poland, etc., would rally together to remind the Americans that Europe would not be pushed around.
And I guess I was also hoping that our big European cousins would be there to reassure Canada that everything would be okay.
But that’s not how it went down at the NATO meetings in Brussels.
Even as Trump was tearing down the European peace around them, the senior delegations were trying to tiptoe around the obvious. They sat politely as American MAGA bros lectured them about their failure to defend democracy and listened politely as they were told that the United States was a superior country because everybody had access to a gun.
The Europeans were rattled. They were freaked out. They didn’t expect that Project 2025 would be aimed at them and the future of liberal democracy.
They just couldn’t believe that right before their very eyes the clock was being pushed back to the 1930s.
In Romania, JD Vance is interfering with the country’s election process. In Germany, Musk is promoting the extremist far right. In the Baltic states, there is a deep fear that Trump is going to sell them out to Putin. And in Ukraine, Trump is now blaming Ukraine for the war and pushing for an election to replace President Zelenskyy.
Coming from Canada, where our very right to exist as a nation has been called into question, I felt the diplomatic niceties were not the order of the day. And over the course of the meetings, I had a few choice exchanges with American Republicans.
In the official interventions that I made, I went hard at the duplicity of Trump and the need for allied nations to stand up for the rule of law.
This blunt language opened doors for representatives from many countries to approach me to discuss what could be done. I told them bluntly that now was the moment where we either stood up for the vision of a democratic West or allowed it to be torn apart.
In the final morning session, I shook up a staid presentation by pointing out that while we were talking about our shared values, two criminal leaders were meeting in Saudi Arabia to sell out the people of Ukraine.
Following my intervention, the Latvian delegation completely dropped the gloves and went hard on Trump. The hall erupted in cheers.
Afterward, the lead Latvian delegate came up to shake my hand, saying:
“We decided it was time to start acting like Canadians.”
I learned in Brussels that Canada has never been more alone than it is today.
Defending our nation from a gangster state is going to be an expensive and long-term commitment. We will have to hunker down and make tough decisions about our economy and national defence.
We are alone, yet we are not truly alone.
Many of our allied countries share our fears. They just don’t know what to do.
But we can resist the Trump/Putin plan. My hope is that in the coming months, nations like Europe, Australia, Japan, Latin America, and Canada can work together to oppose the Trump gang.
Trump is being reckless on so many fronts, and he will trip and fall. And this will be the opportunity in the United States to begin pushing back.
But my advice to fellow Canadians and our international allies is that we can’t wait or hope for America to get its act together. The resistance must start now.
I am hoping that a coalition from around the world will join Canada.
But if not, we will stand on our own.
Canadians will never kiss the gangster ring, no matter how hard the fight.
As an American who is fighting this on the home turf, on the community scale trying to reach upward from the bottom, I am so proud of your standing up. If we had more politicians like you within the United States, perhaps our politicians wouldn't have fallen into this habit of neglecting the Constitution they swore to uphold, or the people they made an oath to represent.
These are dark, terrifying times as an American. Hope for us lies now within our own selves, as individuals and citizens fighting for democracy against a great autocratic machine, and in our neighbors and other democracies of the world recognizing that this type of behavior from our government is absolutely abhorrent. It cannot be tolerated on a world stage. And it cannot be tolerated here at home.
As an American, I thank you for standing up against fascist frump and his crew. That’s what needs to happen to stop them. It is a repeat of Germany/Europe WWII. And we can’t let it happen. I’m glad people in Brussels heard you and at least some of them spoke up. Many of us support Canada