National Defence Committee on June 15th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 21 ^st meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are going to continue our study of the role of Canadian soldiers in international peace operations after 2011.

We have the pleasure of having with us three witnesses today. We will start with Mr. Hampson, who is

Chancellor's Professor and Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

Welcome.

We also welcome Ernie Regehr, co-founder of Project Ploughshares; Adjunct Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo and Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. We also welcome Paul Samson, Director General of the Strategic Policy Directorate at the Canadian International Development Agency.

Thank you, gentlemen. I am going to give each of you from five to seven minutes to make your presentations.

After that, the members will have time to ask you questions.

The floor is yours, Mr. Hampson.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson, Chancellor's Professor and Director, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you.

In my remarks I would like to address three questions that were put to me. The first is, what is the changing nature of the international environment in which Canadian Forces can expect to operate in the future; secondly, what will be the role of the United Nations in NATO in such future peace operations; and thirdly, what is likely to be the Canadian role in such operations.

First, Canadian Forces are going to confront an increasingly complex international environment in which there is going to be a wide range of diverse threats and security challenges. Many of these threats emanate from within individual societies and states, but as we've seen, they have a habit of spreading across their borders into the surrounding environment, and at many times become impacted by an unhealthy regional dynamic. To further complicate the picture, today's security threats encompass a whole series of other factors, such as piracy, narco-trafficking, transnational crime, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism.

The Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, near Washington, which tracks global trends in armed conflict, points out that although there was a steady decline in the number of active conflicts around the globe immediately following the Cold War, the trend in the past four to five years now appears to be reversing itself, with a resurgence of armed conflict and violence in many countries. Furthermore, many of the peace agreements that were concluded in the 1980s and 1990s to end violent sectarian strife in many parts of the globe are failing. Since 1982 the number of significant terrorist attacks that have involved loss of life, serious injury, or major property damage has also risen steadily.

Many countries continue to suffer problems of chronic instability. The third wave of democracy has witnessed the emergence of democratically elected, populist, authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, regimes that are distinctly illiberal in the practice of governance and that in some cases pose a direct threat to their neighbours. We see this with Venezuela and the antics of its unpredictable leader Hugo Chávez. We also see it with countries like Iran, which not only have unpredictable leaders but are also acquiring nuclear capabilities.

The annual failed states index, developed by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, identifies some 60 countries as being on the verge of political and economic collapse. The fact that so many countries are susceptible to internal conflict and social disintegration suggests that there is enormous potential for instability in the international system. However, today's globalized world is not flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman would have us believe, but lumpy. Some regions of the world are much more unstable than others. The most troubling regional subsystems in the globalization era are the areas constituted by sub-Saharan African countries and predominantly Muslim countries, which stretch from Morocco and Senegal in the west to Malaysia and Indonesia in the east. sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most conflict-ridden regions of the globe, and many Muslim countries have experienced an increase in armed conflict and violence in recent years. Pivotal states that are relatively stable in Africa and the Muslim world, like Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, are also coming under growing political pressure because of their sluggish economic performance, growing internal divisions, and inability to provide economic opportunity for the majority of their citizens. So the world, as we look to the future, is going to be marked by continuing, and perhaps increasing, instability.

Let me turn to the second question that I put to you: what is the role of the United Nations and NATO in this changing global order? Major international security bodies, such as the UN and NATO, have been scrambling for politically sustainable and doctrinely coherent strategies. Their search for answers has produced familiar policy catchphrases aimed at generating political will for action: failed states, cooperative security, loose nukes, post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, the responsibility to protect, genocide prevention, and the war on terrorism. In a world where threats to international security can be global, transnational, or local, and at times can operate at all levels, there's little sign of an emerging global consensus on which powers our institution should be responsible for managing these threats. For example, with the attention of major global powers focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, many other conflicts in the world, as we know, have been either forgotten--Mindanao in the Philippines, Western Sahara in sub-Saharan Africa--or simply excluded from international treatment or consideration.

With the proliferation in the number of global, regional, and sub-regional entities since the “second” Cold War, there has also been continuing confusion about role-sharing among different institutions, which in turn has led to unequal burden-sharing, as we all know. Some countries like Canada are perhaps carrying more than their fair share of the security burden.

The traditional institutional hierarchy between regional institutions and organizations and the United Nations, as envisaged in the UN charter, is also evolving. It is becoming at once both more flat, with the erosion of traditional political hierarchies, and also more deeply interconnected.

There is also more than a haphazard quality to those instances where the international community has intervened, which is compounded by continuing moral and legal double standards in selecting cases for intervention, including the fact that very few, if any, cases where intervention has actually occurred have been prompted by, for example, the responsibility to protect doctrine or other human security precepts and norms.

The appetite and political will for wider engagement also differs from one region to another. In some regions such as the Caribbean, Africa, and central Asia, there is a receptivity to capacity-building initiatives by powerful global actors, including the United Nations. But we also have to recognize that in other regions--Southeast Asia and the Middle East, for example--there's either resistance or ambivalence about this prospect, and many states continue to worry about intrusions into their sovereignty.

Security cooperation in today's world is increasingly based on patterns of limited consensus. When cooperation occurs, it is generally because there are a number of countries that are willing to set the agenda and bear a larger share of the economic and political costs of cooperation. In some, the UN and NATO will not always be at the centre of global security operations and conflict management.

Let me turn to my third question. What is the likely future role of the Canadian Forces? I would argue that the Canadian Forces will increasingly find themselves having to adapt to a complex series of different security roles, where they will be asked to do many different things and in coalitions with an increasingly diverse set of international and regional organizations and players. Collective conflict management describes an emerging phenomenon in international relations in which countries, international, regional, and sub-regional organizations, non-official institutions, or private actors are working together to address potential or actual security threats.

Such CCM ventures are directed at controlling, diminishing, or ending violence through combined military operations in concert with non-kinetic means, such as joint diplomacy, peacekeeping, mediation, and conflict prevention. You might call this “three-D plus plus”. In the paper that I've given the clerk, there are a number of examples of these kinds of ventures, and my favourite example, a recent one in which Canadian naval forces have been involved, is the effort to deal with escalating attacks by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa, where you see joint operations of an ad hoc nature, involving NATO, EU, and coalition maritime forces, and a major parallel role by the private sector, especially among those companies that transit in those waters and local actors in the region.

What this means, very quickly, to come to the end of my remarks—

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Hampson, you still have one minute, if you can conclude.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I'm coming to the end of my remarks.

What this means as we look to the future is that there is going to be a growing variety of different actors and institutions in conflict management and security operations. The challenges of effective coordination are going to grow exponentially. As more and more players take the stage, it is going to become increasingly difficult to orchestrate what will surely be an ad hoc process. It will be difficult to maintain coherence and ensure that different security actors, including our own armed forces, are not working at cross-purposes. Multi-party conflict management, or collective conflict management—CCM—is a growing reality of the present era. It requires not just robust forces but a special brand of leadership—military, diplomatic—and development skill sets that are going to pose their own unique challenges to Canada. It's also fair to say that conflict and security management arrangements will increasingly be task and situation determined, improvised with less formal mandates or rules, and developed spontaneously in response to the needs and interests of those who participate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Regehr, please.

[Ernie Regehr, Co-Founder, Project Ploughshares; Adjunct Associate Professor, Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo; Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I add my thanks to the committee for the opportunity to be here.

I have provided the committee with a paper that's been distributed this morning. I want to make three additional points just now.

Approaches to post-2011 roles for Canadian Forces outside North America will clearly be influenced by the Afghanistan experience. When the Prime Minister told CNN in March 2009, “My own judgment is, quite frankly, that we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency,” we should understand that he was not only stating an Afghan-specific truth, but was reflecting a broader reality.

Complex human conflicts are not amenable to purely military solutions. That's how the UN Security Council put it in its most recent resolution on Afghanistan.

The focus on multi-dimensional or whole-of-government approaches by earlier witnesses before this committee speaks to the same reality. National or intra-state armed conflicts are largely ended through negotiations and high-level political settlements. The latter is the phrase used by General McChrystal in his 2009 report.

The point is simply to note that if insurgencies are not defeated but end through political negotiations, then such processes should be built into peace support operations from the start. That's a point the Department of Foreign Affairs has made in setting out considerations for deciding whether to participate in a particular peacekeeping mission; it says it asks whether “the peacekeeping operation will take place alongside a process aimed at a political settlement to the conflict”.

The Security Council's February 2010 session on peacekeeping emphasized that “an advanced peace process is an important factor in achieving successful transition from a peacekeeping operation to other configurations of United Nations presence”. But such a process cannot credibly be left to a national or host government alone. It requires international diplomacy that engages the conflict and the search for political solutions from local to national to regional contexts.

My second point is that while Canada must be part of future peace operations, we have to understand that there is no guarantee that other efforts will be much easier or more obviously successful than has been the intervention in Afghanistan thus far. Peace operations after all are by definition mounted in extraordinarily difficult circumstances; even after peace agreements are signed, state governance remains dangerously fragile, economies are shattered, security forces are seriously compromised, and political loyalties are complex and frayed.

Remember, in 2002, when the International Security Assistance Force was established in Afghanistan through the Bonn peace accords, our forces were there in a consent-based security assistance mission anchored by a peace agreement. In 2003, ISAF became increasingly focused on extending the authority of the government further out into the country—a prominent feature of operations these days. Throughout that period, there were plenty of spoilers to be dealt with through what was most certainly a robust peacekeeping operation. But the strategic-level consent of the early years of ISAF steadily eroded, and by 2005 it had essentially been lost. ISAF had morphed into an enforcement mission in much of the country, but without a persistent process aimed at political settlement.

In other words, peace support operations lead to the unexpected, with no guarantees. It is the constant updating of the lessons of experience that can shift the odds toward success.

Finally, and briefly, the fact that Canada does not face imminent or foreseeable military challenges to its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or internal order means it enjoys considerable flexibility in determining the best ways and means of addressing security challenges beyond our borders. In other words, because Canada is not burdened by the need to maintain high levels of military forces for security at home, our international peace and security toolkit need not be dominated by a military capacity.

We have options. In the future we can decide on the most effective ways to deploy resources abroad in response to contemporary security threats. Canada is thus in an excellent position to make the kinds of multi-dimensional contributions to international peace and security that a succession of witnesses before the committee have said are essential.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Samson.

[Paul Samson, Director General, Strategic Policy Directorate, Strategic Policy and Performance Branch, Canadian International Development Agency]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for seeking CIDA's perspectives on this important topic today.

In my statement, I will briefly discuss the nature of the international environment, CIDA's engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states, and the comprehensive, whole-of-government approach we are adopting.

The first area is the international environment, and quite a bit has already been said on that, so I will be very brief. The current international environment can be characterized by a set of frequent, complex, and interdependent challenges generating humanitarian crises with multiple dimensions. Contributing factors include the lingering impacts of the food, energy, and economic crises, the effects of climate change and the effects of environmental degradation, and the persistence of civil conflict undermining security and the rule of law.

The interplay of factors makes achievement of the millennium development goals, which is a major international framework for development issues, by 2015 a real challenge.

We have a list of the millennium development goals available to the committee as part of this statement.

As a development agency, we work with a wide range of governments and non-governmental organizations. These partnerships are central to our operations. Today's responses to complex humanitarian emergencies, often in the context of peace and stability operations, involve more partnerships with diverse organizations. This set of key humanitarian partners continues to seek the preservation of neutral “humanitarian space“ within peace operations.

The second point is CIDA's engagement.

CIDA engages in a limited number of fragile and conflict-affected states. In the fiscal year 2008-09, CIDA's assistance to Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, and the West Bank Gaza totalled over $545 million, about one quarter of which, or $135 million, was emergency humanitarian assistance.

CIDA's humanitarian assistance saves lives and alleviates suffering. It is provided on the basis of identified needs, and these efforts are guided by the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Canada is a consistent, generous, and reliable contributor to humanitarian appeals and to the related coordinating bodies, including the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

With the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, CIDA has contributed to the evolution of international principles and norms that guide all of our operations in fragile and conflicted states, including those of the military. We'd like to draw the attention of the committee to the OECD principles and good practice of humanitarian donorship and other norms that we are providing here today.

In the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, Canada quickly organized a ministerial preparatory conference in Montreal where participants agreed on the principles of ownership, coordination, sustainability, effectiveness, inclusiveness and accountability in alignment with the OECD and other international norms. Recognizing the Government of Haiti's leadership in setting the strategic direction for reconstruction and longer-term development, Canada is now working to align its programming with the action plan for national recovery and development for Haiti. This plan proposes actions to be taken over the next 18 months to rebuild Haiti but also to create the conditions to tackle the structural causes of Haiti's under-development.

The third point is a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach.

In terms of the origin of the whole-of-government approach, CIDA views our engagement in the humanitarian and political crisis of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s as very significant. We learned a great deal about the critical importance of accountable and competent national government institutions that guarantee citizens safety and foster social, political, and economic development.

In Afghanistan, CIDA works with the Government of Canada task force that integrates Canada's response on the largest development and humanitarian assistance program we have ever undertaken. We are learning that helping to create a viable state requires sophisticated levels of international coordination and unwavering commitment to reinforce the connection between government and citizens. We are learning that hope for a better future requires broad-based, tangible, and visible results on the ground.

At the operational level, similar machinery exists to coordinate our programs in other fragile and conflict-affected countries.

In Sudan, CIDA support focuses on food security, children and youth, and governance, which contributes to Canada's whole-of-government effort to reduce vulnerability, save lives, and build longer-term stability. The comprehensive approach is delivering a more coordinated and strategic response to a rapidly changing context in Sudan.

In the West Bank and Gaza, CIDA is concentrating its programming on justice sector reform, private sector development and humanitarian assistance. There we have learned the importance of placing state-building at the centre of the development agenda and forming synergies between Government of Canada departments.

Reflecting on these experiences and drawing upon lessons learned through recent studies by the UN, the OECD, and other international organizations, we are focusing on strategic results that improve local capacity for basic services delivery: increased legitimate and private sector activity, handling grievances through political dialogue and negotiation, and reinforcing core government functions. Also, the importance of gender equality considerations are being integrated throughout as fundamental.

In closing, I would like to highlight the importance of ongoing civil-military planning coordination as well as shared analysis and assessment of the local context for future integrated peacekeeping and peace support operations. To improve interoperability, these capabilities of departments in joint missions need to be better understood and integrated, perhaps through cross-training and career paths that increase exposure to several departments in such operations.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Samson.

Mr. Martin now has the floor for seven minutes.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.

Thank you, Professor Hampson, Dr. Regehr, and Mr. Samson for being here today.

If we have a responsibility to protect, I would argue we don't have an obligation to act in the face of conflict. We have a judicial framework, but unfortunately we don't have an enforcement mechanism.

My first question is in terms of the execution of what we could do to prevent deadly conflict. I know you are all experts in this. Is the Standby High Readiness Brigade dead in the water? If it is, how can we resurrect it, if that's appropriate? If it isn't, how can we make sure we have a functional brigade that can be inserted into an area when we know a conflict is pending?

[Ernie Regehr]

I can start. My understanding is that SHIRBRIG hasn't turned out to be an efficient and effective measure there.

I agree with the implication that there needs to be some kind of collective readiness to deploy that is available, but I'm not sure as to the extent to which that's going to solve the problem of obligation. Through the UN resolution, states have accepted responsibility to act under chapter 6 and declare a readiness to act under chapter 7, but there have been comments about the unevenness of our response in various parts of the world, and that's a long way from an obligation.

I think in one sense we're down to the national interest, and the national interest is not a reliable guide for responding to conflict. There is some need for political leadership there and indicating the extent to which Canada does have an interest in constructive contributions to inner conflict, wherever it occurs internationally.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm separating out the standby high-readiness brigade from ad hoc contributions that we've seen up until now to be able to prevent conflict.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Just to build on Dr. Regehr's remarks, first, I think we have to recognize that a SHIRBRIG kind of mechanism that's placed in the United Nations will continue to run into all the kinds of difficulties that we've seen when it comes to getting the Security Council to act in a conflict-preventive capacity.

We've been talking about conflict prevention in the United Nations since the early 1990s, and yet when one looks at the amount of progress that has been made, it has been extremely modest.

Secondly, I think we also have to recognize that when it comes to intervening actors, and this is stated perhaps a little more clearly in my paper--which is going to be distributed to the members of the committee--what we often see is that sub-regional organizations or regional organizations are increasingly the first actors to intervene, and this is certainly true in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is greater will, there is greater political capacity, certainly on the part of the African Union, on the part of sub-regional organizations like ECOWAS, to actually do something. In fact, what has happened in a number of cases--Liberia, in Darfur, Sudan--is that regional organizations have sent troops, and then subsequent to that, there's been a double-hatting arrangement, where the UN gives its blessing to the mission and other international actors provide logistics and support.

But to come back to the notion of conflict prevention, I think a lot more has to be done to work with regional and sub-regional organizations to strengthen their capacities for conflict prevention. There has been an ongoing dialogue between the UN and the AU on this. It's been intermittent. It was much stronger under the previous Secretary General than it is under the current Secretary General, but I think there's a lot more that can be done there to recognize what is clearly the changing reality, that regional organizations are often the first line of defence when it comes to mobilizing forces for peace operations.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

You're an expert, which is a nice segue into my next question, which is really to do with lessons learned from the ECOWAS experience in West Africa, the MONUC's experience in the DRC, and two other parts. Do you see the African Union in sub-Saharan Africa as being an agent to do exactly what you said? Are there lessons learned from failures in MONUC and the DRC, successes in ECOWAS in West Africa, and the intriguing example of Great Britain, of what happened in Sierra Leone when they dropped 862 troops in there and stopped a horrific situation. So in that milieu of different options, where do you see a possible route to move forward, recognizing that each conflict is unique in itself.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I will just answer very briefly, and then the other members of the committee may wish to offer their observations.

There is a conflict prevention unit within the framework of the evolving African Union machinery. I think it's fair to say that groups like the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre have been working to strengthen training, to develop and promote greater awareness around conflict prevention within the African Union. Clearly, a lot more can be done to reinforce those efforts I think, and also in the area of diplomacy, since that was mentioned, to support efforts by regional leaders, who are often the first mediators and negotiators who go into these kinds of situations to try to prevent an escalation of conflict. It's not simply a matter of putting forces into place, which has been very much the discussion around conflict prevention. It's also about strengthening the role of diplomacy. A point to bear in mind in the case of Rwanda is that it began with the classic and colossal failure of diplomacy before UN peacekeeping forces were left to deal with the problem.

So I think around the three Ds, more emphasis on preventative diplomacy, mediation, negotiations, those kinds of activities...

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bachand, you have seven minutes.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to welcome you all. You made very good presentations and provided us with quite impressive documentation that we are going to have to consider.

At the moment, my concern is with the whole question of the UN and NATO. Would you not agree that a major reform of the UN is absolutely needed? My impression is that the organization had some merit. We know the circumstances under which it was created. The wish was for the clash of weapons to be replaced by diplomacy. But, after a number of years, and because of the complexity of the conflicts, I feel that the UN no longer has what it takes to react adequately. I would like to hear your comments about that.

In terms of operational theatres like Afghanistan, I often ask UN people, such as the Secretary General's representative in theatre, whether he or General McChrystal is in charge. There seems to be no coordination and the UN looks very weak. When there are problems, the Security Council accommodates the various views of the countries around the table. This makes it hard to reach agreement and consensus. What do you think of the idea of a major reform of the UN?

Mr. Samson, I could ask you questions about CIDA's accountability, which seems to be greatly lacking at the moment. You have been to Afghanistan, but do you ask people to be accountable to you? I have seen road builders charging $90 per tonne for stone that normally sells for $10 per tonne. They said that the international forces were going to pay. When CIDA is paying, they ask for an outrageous price. Why is that?

The question about the major reform of the UN goes to Mr. Hampson and Mr. Regehr.

[Paul Samson]

Thank you, sir.

I will start with the second question. I think that, clearly, accountability is fundamental, especially in fragile and conflict-affected countries, as you mentioned. We have all kinds of checks and balances in those situations. As I mentioned, we often work with partners. Food aid, for example is run by another organization, which puts strict controls and checks in place. When a problem arises, we react immediately. So we feel sure that the system is working efficiently. That said, it is true that, in a very fragile state, things are more intense and more difficult.

[Ernie Regehr]

Thank you.

I agree that the United Nations certainly needs to be made much more effective. I don't know whether that means reform. I'm not sure whether you're using the term “reform” in a formal sense of institutional reform, which is a very difficult and long-tried but long-failed exercise. But effectiveness is critical, because the United Nations really remains the preeminent source of legitimacy for collective international operations, so it's essential.

One of the things we have to reconsider in Canada and other western countries is the degree to which we have tended to disengage from active involvement in UN-based peacekeeping operations. We need to re-engage there. There can be some sense of division of labour--some countries can provide troops and boots on the ground at less expense than western countries can--but there also need to be some actual troops on the ground from western countries to demonstrate it as a shared activity in which all countries have a stake.

If we continue to disengage from international collective operations led by the UN, we undermine the institution and implicitly look for an alternative. But it's the central institution that needs to be reinforced, and that means re-engagement with it.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Just to add to that point, there is a wealth of empirical research that shows that when it comes to complex peace-building operations, going right back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, the UN has had a much better track record than has any other actor or international institution, and there is a wealth of experience in the specialized agencies of the United Nations. Bear in mind that Mozambique, El Salvador, Namibia, and Cambodia are all UN operations, and they are, for the most part, relatively successful. I think it's probably also fair to say that if you were to rewrite the Afghan peace-building story and it had taken place under UN auspices as opposed to NATO auspices, we might have seen a very different outcome from the one we see now. There are a lot of people who believe that, including me.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You still have a minute.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

You were mentioning NATO. Do you not have the impression that, in Afghanistan, the UN seems to want to subcontract NATO, thereby forcing NATO countries into conflicts they would rather avoid? For Afghanistan, it is another story. I think that Canada said that it was prepared to go there as part of the UN. But the Americans, the Canadians, the British arrived first, then NATO took over.

In your opinion, is this a major trend that is going to last into the future?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Can you give a short answer?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

A short answer is probably not. I think there is a great deal of internal division in NATO; we're seeing that right now. There are some who carry the freight and others who don't. I think post-Afghanistan, if there is a post-Afghanistan, there isn't going to be a great appetite among NATO members to engage in the kind of out-of-area operations that they have.