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The original purpose of NATO was to counter the military threat of the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, NATO continued even though they’d served their purpose. Like the Rolling Stones, but with nuclear bombs. According to NATO’s Article 5, an attack on one member is an attack on all. The logic of this strategy was articulated by a famous military expert who said: “Because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process of [Article 5, NATO] is terrifying and simple to understand.”

That was actually Dr. Strangelove talking about the Doomsday device, not Article 5, but the reasoning is the same. Each country added to NATO is effectively another tripwire on a doomsday device. Now Canada is helping to stretch one of those tripwires tighter, deploying 450 troops and up to six jets to eastern Europe. I guess Trudeau decided to flop out his CF-18s after all.

The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that world leaders are willing to risk a terminal nuclear war to protect their power. And power is what this is all about. And the more tripwires NATO adds to its doomsday machine, and the tighter it pulls them, the greater the odds of… doom.

As Dr. Strangelove pointed out, the whole purpose of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret. NATO effectively does that by dishonestly portraying itself as a peace mission. But maybe if we just rename NATO what it is, the Doomsday Machine, we’d be a little more open to unplugging it.

This video originally appeared on the Toronto Star

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Scott Vrooman

Scott has written and performed comedy for TV (Conan, Picnicface, This Hour Has 22 Minutes), radio (This is That), and the web (Vice, Funny or Die, College Humor, The Toronto Star, The Huffington Post,...