Thanks to William Thorsell for clarifying our disagreement. He either regrets or denies that the West had “won the Cold War.” Of course that cannot be denied as the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 separate states and, as he acknowledges, international communism collapsed. I cannot believe that he really regrets those events, but he does believe that Russia has a perfect right to attempt to regain much of its former status as the Soviet Union, which had more than twice the population of Russia.

In fact, the West was remarkably gracious and not a bit triumphalist at the end of the Cold War and treated Boris Yeltsin with great respect. But the core of my problem with William is that he believes Russia had a complete right to intervene in Ukraine to promote a Russian annexationist faction over the pro-West European majority of Ukrainians, and that the West, including the United States, had no right to take counter-measures that prevented Ukraine from subserviently reentering the Russian sphere contrary to the wishes of its own people.

In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.

This treason could be the tip of the iceberg

The biggest news this week by far was the report produced by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) on foreign interference in Canadian politics.

Based on voluminous intelligence shared with the committee, the report sets out allegations that several Canadian parliamentarians have wittingly or unwittingly had inappropriate (and possibly illegal) relations with foreign governments. In some cases, it sounds like these interactions may have stemmed from a combination of ego and ignorance. In other cases, they were more intentional including sharing information about colleagues and soliciting foreign interference in party nominations or riding elections.

The committee’s findings are of course shocking.