British journalist and author Peter Hitchens has come up with a fantasy television scenario designed to impress upon Westerners in general and Americans in particular how Russia feels about NATO’s activities in Eastern Europe and Ukraine in the run-up to the current crisis, envisioning a situation in which China takes advantage of unrest in Quebec to establish a military foothold in North America.
“A few years in the future, with the world in economic turmoil and the whole planet in a tense, uncertain mess, French-speaking Quebec finally breaks away from Canada in a dramatic, overwhelming referendum,” Hitchens wrote in an op-ed in a major British publication over the weekend.
“Canada grins and bears it. But then Quebec’s elected government is overthrown by ultra-nationalist fanatics, after violent riots in Montreal in which Chinese diplomats and politicians openly support the protesters. One minister from Peking is even recorded, on his phone, discussing the make-up of a new Quebec government with the Chinese ambassador to Montreal,” the observer added, evoking the infamous leaked conversation between then US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt in early February 2014, several weeks before Ukraine’s government was overthrown in a violent coup.
“The new Quebec regime gives a hard time to the country’s remaining English-speakers, knowing perfectly well that this will infuriate English-speaking Canadians and Americans. It also makes a huge trade deal with Peking, and follows that by forming a military alliance,” Hitchens continued.
“Within a year or so, there are Chinese troops and aircraft in Montreal, just 370 miles from New York City. What’s more, China says it plans to site missile launchers in Quebec. It says these are purely defensive. But as it happens they could also be used to fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. ‘We wouldn’t do that’, says China. But there is no treaty to stop it doing so,” the observer noted, echoing Russia’s long-standing concerns about the US deployment of Tomahawk missile-compatible launchers at its ground-based missile defense sites in Poland and Romania.
“What do you think the United States government would do in these circumstances?” Hitchens asked, recalling the existence of the Monroe Doctrine – the 1823 message to Congress by President James Monroe which established Washington’s security ‘red lines’ for foreign powers operating virtually anywhere in the Western hemisphere.
“Because you see, what I have described in my [Quebec-China] thriller is pretty much the mirror image of what the USA and NATO have been doing in Europe for some years. For Canada and the USA, read Russia. For Quebec, read Ukraine and the Baltic States. There are, in fact, NATO troops stationed now in Estonia. They have been known to hold tank parades just yards from the border with Russia. That puts them 81 miles (about the distance from London to Coventry) from St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city,” Hitchens added.
Emphasizing that he wasn’t “justifying” Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in response to decades of NATO provocations, Hitchens nevertheless stressed that he would be “amazed” if Washington and its allies didn’t recognize that their policy vis-à-vis Moscow “might be risking such an outcome.”
Hitchens expressed gave concern that the “nuclear element” was the worst part of the current NATO-Russia crisis.
“During the whole Cold War I never really believed we were in danger. The Cuban crisis, which slightly overshadowed preparations for my 11th birthday, persuaded me that everyone would have more sense. I thought and think that TV dramas about a nuclear Armageddon, such as the BBC’s The War Game and the American The Day After, were unconvincing. They couldn’t come up with a believable reason for a war to start. But now it seems entirely plausible,” the observer noted, warning that “thanks to arrogance and folly” of modern-day leaders, the post-apocalyptic scenarios painted in fiction, like the US series Jericho, could very well wind up happening in real life.
“So I shall carry on saying that we need peace in Ukraine, and soon,” Hitchens concluded.
The observer has taken considerable flak for his stance on the Ukraine crisis, including his recognition of the radical nationalism plaguing the current Ukrainian government, and his sentiments that Crimea is historically part of Russia. Hitchens and other members of Western anti-war movements have been smeared as “Putin apologists” and “pro-Kremlin stooges.” The observer has responded by saying that the charges against him over his urging for “a different view on this crisis” is the way “dissent is treated in dictatorships.”