Conservatives call for a no-fly zone is cynical and dangerous

All 30 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are in agreement that establishing and policing a no-fly zone over Ukraine - as desirable as that might be in theory, and as often as Ukrainian President Zelinskyy makes his heartfelt pleas for it - would be a grave mistake, and potentially open the door to a Third World War involving nuclear powers, which would be in no-one's interest.

The Conservative Party of Canada, however, feel that they know better than all these esteemed and knowledgeable Western democracies. Yesterday, interim leader Candice Bergen - she of the Freedom Convoy inclinations - outlined the Conservatives' plan to impose a no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors throughout Ukraine. It's not clear how that differs from any other kind of no-fly zone or how Ms. Bergen and the Tories plan on working this plan without giving Putin the gift of a NATO escalation of the war, but presumably they have thought about it. Haven't they? 

This is not something that Ms. Bergen came up with all on her ownsome, incidentally - it is essentially what a bunch of American "foreign policy experts" and ex-military types proposed a few days ago. Setting aside the fact that the majority of Russia's bombardments are actually ground-based not airborne, this plan also involves a lot of magical thinking, and a surprising lack of realpolitik commonsense and good judgement on the part of these august personages, and has been robustly argued against.

Of course, the Conservatives are not in power in Canada (thankfully), so they can safely make all kinds of wacky, impractical suggestions in any number of policy areas that they feel might appeal to their voting block, without any danger of them actually having to be implemented. They like to be seen to be doing something (or saying they are doing something) that the government is not. They think it makes Justin Trudeau look weak (except that doing the right thing is often the harder course). The Republicans are doing much the same in America. 

But they must know that a "limited" no-fly zone of this kind is not a practical possibility, or at least extremely inadvisable. And, anyway, this is not something that Canada (or the USA or any other individual country) can bring about on its own; it would have to be a whole-of-NATO decision, and it potentially affects the whole world.

Playing divisive party politics in these kinds of circumstances and with these kinds of stakes is cynical in the extreme. Whoever gets to be leader of the Conservative Party of Canada needs to rein in this kind of behaviour. But don't hold your breath.