Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's pretty obvious that at this point, we're looking, if you will, at almost seismic shifts in defence capability. The U.S. budget is somewhere around three-quarters of a trillion dollars. It's almost invariably going to go down to about half a billion dollars as civilians assert their control over the military. Whether it's Romney or Obama really doesn't much matter, because it just has to be reined in.
The U.S. is far and away the largest contributor to NATO. They've also suggested or said that they're going to be shifting their emphasis from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Isn't it virtually inevitable that NATO will be a reduced organization within a very foreseeable future?