Cohen: Protesters should learn more about NATO before smashing windows at the Palais des congrès

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When you march, shout, smash windows and burn cars in a big city, you’re going to get attention. You’re going to invite police, tear gas, scuffles and arrests, and make news, which is the point of protest.

And so it was with the band of malcontents who filled the streets of Montreal this weekend. They loathe those inside the Palais des congrès and their purpose. Too bad; our fellow travellers might have learned something about peace and freedom.

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Inside the Palais, which was locked down, representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were considering the state of the alliance. They talked about strengthening NATO’s integrated defences, using AI in the military domain, ending sexual violence in conflict and the impact of climate change. They talked about the future.

Most important, they addressed Ukraine, the war of 1,000 days that began when the Russians invaded in 2022. Since then, NATO has supported Ukraine with training, money and munitions, all critical to its survival.

Let us say this: If NATO did not exist today, Ukraine wouldn’t, either.

In the streets of Montreal, the real cause was the Palestinian people, the Israeli offensive in Gaza and Canada’s response. There is enough there to power a protest — “solidarity with Palestine,” the crowd chanted — and they should have left it at that.

But they decided to expand their geopolitical complaint to demand that Canada “get out of NATO.” The protesters, some waving Communist Party of Canada flags, seem to think NATO is dangerous, which, if you’re Communist, you would.

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Communists and their woolly-minded allies on the barricades railed against “the complicity” of NATO in the war in Gaza. They made it about NATO, about Canada, and why we should withdraw from this congress of warmongers.

Well, no, we shouldn’t. NATO is indispensable to our security. And since our friends in the streets claim compassion for the besieged Palestinians — as they should — they might want to stretch a bit, read a bit and understand that the greater injustice in the world today is Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been wounded or killed. Villages, towns and cities razed. Utilities bombed. Innocents imprisoned, tortured and raped. Children abducted. Art and artifacts looted.

Since the beginning of the conflict, NATO has stood with Ukraine. Led by Joe Biden and the United States, NATO has armed Ukraine. It has stopped short of entering the fray, but has tried — sometimes belatedly, inadequately, agonizingly — to give Ukraine a chance against a country several times its size. To stop Vladimir Putin and contain his expansionism, which is a threat to the Baltics, Moldova, Poland and beyond.

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The importance of NATO as the world’s most successful alliance goes beyond Ukraine. From the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, it ensured the survival of western Europe. Just ask the burghers of West Berlin.

In all that time, Canada has remained a member of the alliance. Under the leadership of Lester Pearson as foreign minister, Canada helped found NATO in 1949. We wrote Article 2 of the NATO charter, in hope of making it as much a political, social and economic alliance as a military one.

That never happened. But Pearson — who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for brokering peace in the Suez Crisis — considered NATO his greatest achievement in foreign affairs.

In the post-war world, when Canada fielded a fine foreign service, funded international aid and maintained a robust military, we found the will and the way to station forces in Germany. Our commitment to NATO was always greater than our commitment to peacekeeping, the angelic international vocation we’ve since abandoned.

Now NATO faces a crisis over Donald Trump, an isolationist who says Canada and other members are free riders in the organization from which he threatens to withdraw, which would devastate it. Meanwhile, he blithely tells Putin to do whatever he wants.

Memo to the protesters: If you really care about dignity and democracy, protest Trump, Putin and a Canada that’s no longer serious about the world.

Andrew Cohen is a commentator, journalist and author of While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World.

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