Michael Ignatieff with an elegant essay on how a sense of betrayal clears the way for clear-eyes, hard-nosed determination:

“Ukraine will never trust the United States again. America’s Canadian and European allies will neither forget nor forgive. The sting of betrayal makes this moment the starting point of a new dispensation, in which Europe looks to itself for its survival and Canada looks to its own resources, capacity for cohesion and history of endurance to survive as a free people.

Whoever is in charge of Canada’s government after the next election, the country will never return to a trusting relationship with its neighbor. Once your right to exist has been questioned, there is no way back. No agreement can be counted on to last, no understanding can return to the friendly domain of the tacit and taken for granted, no sharing of intelligence can be fully trusted. When Canadians go to Washington, even in a Democratic administration, some time in the future, it will all be strictly business, deal by contingent deal, cash on the nail, time-limited, trust-free.

Betrayal, it needs to be remembered, is a great teacher. It is one of those blows that awakens you to harsh reality. You realize you never knew the person you once trusted. You face up to your own dependence, and you come face to face with your weakness. Betrayal is a coming awake.

Betrayal leaves you alone, confronting your solitude, forcing you to recognize that if you don’t get over it, you’ll become a prisoner of your victimhood. Betrayal teaches you to get up off the floor and stand on your own. It is the shock that forces you to reclaim your sovereignty, your pride and your independence. As with our private lives, so with the lives of nations and peoples. The American regime will have to reckon with the fact that the world it is creating will be decisively shaped by the new found determination of those it has betrayed.”