the thing about the germans (and also the italians) is that you're kind of stuck with them if you want a serious defense pact with france. that region was in a perpetual civil war from the death of charlemagne until the death of hitler. if you want peace there, you need a reich.

but, this country has no historical attachment to either germany or italy, and so the defense pact is pragmatic rather than ideological - it's not because i care about germany or italy, but because i care about france.

then, you get a country like austria, which shouldn't really exist; it's literally the eastern march, the boundary. if it weren't for feudalism, it would have been in germany the whole time.

but, there's this gigantic cultural line that opens up through europe at this point, that really does open up into a historical east. there is absolutely no way that a western empire will hold countries like poland and slovakia, let alone latvia and lithuania, in the long run (although the balts are not the slavs).

we basically have the choice between losing a war, or withdrawing before we lose a war. and, we can overthrow the government in russia first, if we want - but we're still going to eventually lose a war, or withdraw before we do.

well, there's a third option, of course - ethnic cleansing.

but, we fought a world war to stop that.

i'm not interpreting trudeau's insistence on playing army in this way at all. i understand that this is more about chrystia freeland essentially being corrupted by her ukrainian nationalism - that our foreign policy has been taken over by a foreign agent, and trudeau is basically too ignorant to stop it.

so, this is really just base stupidity. again.

it's going to cost him a lot of votes, though.