Chrystia Freeland's brain farts don't add up to a "doctrine"

Deputy PM and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland dropped by Brookings Institution the other day to share her thoughts on this perilous new world Putin ushered in with his “barbaric violation” of international norms last February. Brookings is the grand-daddy of US think-tanks, and very rich. In the course of her introductory remarks, acting Brookings President Amy Liu thanked Chrystia for funding from the Government of Canada. I was surprised to learn my tax dollars were going to a US think-tank cum PR outfit sitting on well over half a billion USD. Her talk was the predictable nothing-burger one expects from Chrystia. Lots of gratuitous trash talk aimed at “autocrats” generally and Putin in particular. Repeated shout-outs to the heroism of the Ukrainian people. And lots of Green Transition hot air, as any progressive pol must include in every speech these days Most of all, it was a pastiche of talking points out of the recycling bin of US propaganda. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a “sunny season” embraced humanity. For thirty years we were fat and happy and pretty much the entire world was marching towards Liberal Democracy. Then, in the early hours of Feb. 24, Putin wrecked everything! Yup, in one fell swoop, Putin destroyed humanity’s sunny season and took the planet all the way back to the 19th century. Pretty much what you’d expect from our deputy PM, and what you’d expect a Brookings audience to applaud. None of these people pause to consider what that thirty years of sunshine looked like from the perspective of the global south. That thirty years of sunshine saw Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yugoslavia destroyed by the freedom-and-democracy-loving Nations of Virtue. In every case we promised paradise but delivered destruction. Chrystia divided her cliches into “three pillars” of the way forward. We must strengthen our interdependence with fellow Liberal Democracies. Translation: cling ever more tightly to Uncle Sam’s skirts. We must remain welcoming to “undecided” nations. Sorry to break it to you, Chrystia, but if you care to look, there’s not a lot of those around. The vast majority of the Global South wants no part in this mission to save American hegemony. We must remain resolute in our determination to isolate and defeat tyranny, starting with Putin, and that means standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes. In a nutshell, the Freeland Doctrine is just more of the same old same old the rest of the world is beyond fed up with. That’s a far better summary of Chrystia’s visit to Brookings than you’ll find at CBC, another recipient of my tax dollars. The think-tank here at Falling Downs proposes that our government cease squandering tax revenues on vanity projects and put the money into addressing the many crises enveloping our society.