No weapons, but a government stance that brings the new Cold War home to Canada

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If the new Cold War is not new, we can now feel it getting colder here in Canada, too.

There had been some wait-and-see about the Canadian response to Russia’s buildup of troops near the Ukrainian border, but the military aid was mostly unsurprising: an expansion and extension of Canada’s training mission with Ukraine’s military, but no shipment of lethal weapons.

Yet with it was the warning that Canada is preparing to join allies in co-ordinated economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine – the Western world’s main deterrent – and a sweeping narrative about the crucial importance of the cause.

This, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet ministers argued, is a fight between democratic choice and autocratic power, between a world with rules and one where might makes right.

“To see an autocratic country like Russia choose to use its military might and its heft to bully and threaten an independent democracy to bow to its will, to be constrained in its path forward, is a threat not just to Ukrainians,” Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday. “It is a threat to all of us who believe in the rights of citizens to elect their governments and pick the direction for their country.”

His Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, framed it as a contest between worldviews. “This is a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism,” she said.

It should be no surprise that expansive rhetoric was immediately met with questions about whether Canada’s response is enough.

But it is also a good bet that even after weeks of concern about a Russian invasion of Ukraine – a further invasion, since its proxies occupied parts of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 – many Canadians will still be a little surprised to realize how far the Western world is already into another Cold War. And that means Canada, too.

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There was Mr. Trudeau, followed by four cabinet ministers, speaking of Russia (and he meant Vladimir Putin) as autocratic, warning Russia about the solidarity of democracies, and pledging to send help to protect Ukrainian cybersecurity and task Canadian diplomats with countering Russian misinformation.

The opposition Conservatives accused Mr. Trudeau of failing Ukraine by declining to send weapons, and Mr. Trudeau couldn’t explain it. He just said the training mission is valuable.

The truth is probably that the political sentiment inside the Liberal government, and among many progressive or Liberal-leaning Canadians, is that it is okay to send assistance to a threatened country, but sending weapons gets closer to participating in potential war. There’s some concern some will feel it undermines the call for de-escalation. Europe is split on that point, too.

Still, the main Western deterrent remains economic. The United States is moving troops to the region, but President Joe Biden isn’t sending the U.S. to war in Ukraine. Instead, he has pledged severe economic sanctions. “Their banks will not be able to deal in dollars,” he said last week. He’s not just talking about some banking inconvenience, but sidelining Russian business from transactions with a lot of the global economy.

In that sense, Mr. Trudeau’s rhetoric, his warning that democracies all face a watershed moment, has a purpose.

Sanctions work better when more countries take part. If Russian companies can’t do business with U.S. banks, or in London’s City, or clear payments or transfer money in the European Union or Canada or Australia, it hurts the Russian economy, especially if sweeping sanctions hit non-Russian companies doing business with Russian firms.

But “solidarity,” as Mr. Trudeau referred to it on Wednesday, is a key part of that arsenal. The EU has threatened stiff sanctions, but with varying degrees of zeal. Countries including Germany depend on Russian natural gas. They can mean a major economic disruption. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has for weeks worked to stiffen European spines.

That’s why Mr. Trudeau spoke repeatedly about his call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier Wednesday, and how they agreed on the need for a co-ordinated response. It is part of the process of making the Western warning bigger.

Carleton University professor Meredith Lilly noted that it is probably better not to specify which sanctions will be imposed. “The threat of sanctions can sometimes be as effective as the follow through,” she said. It may be more effective if Russia thinks they could be “anything and everything.”

There is hope that will be enough to deter Russia from a costly invasion of Ukraine. Even if that’s so, there isn’t much chance it will be the last of the Cold War.

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