There is always a risk because of the kinds of temptations that exist. We look for resources and companies that want to make profits. On occasion we allow companies in and maybe we don't fully think through all of the implications that involve more than just economic benefit, but can involve security factors as well.
This is why it is so essential that the government think in terms of a grand strategy to look at that larger picture at all times. I can well understand that we need to make practical decisions. There are the functional factors and there are some cost factors. What do we get when we build icebreakers? Do we loan them? How do we co-operate with others?
These are decisions at a certain level, but at the highest level of government, that is where you do the grand strategy thinking. We have to ask ourselves if we have really done that effectively, not just in Canada but collectively in the west. I look at the threat that Russia has presented, and this should not have happened. We should not have allowed this. We did not respond properly in the case of Georgia. We did not respond properly in the case of Ukraine, and what happens in Ukraine has an impact on what happens in the Baltics, and what happens in the Baltics has an impact on what happens in the Scandinavian countries and in the Arctic.
When I was doing research on this latest book, I was talking to people in Denmark and Sweden. They said that they were really concerned about what happens in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, but what happens in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania is also influenced by what happened in Ukraine, where Russia was able to demonstrate that they can overthrow the post-Cold War order with impunity. That is what has happened in the case of a country that doesn't have the power.... Russia is not a superpower, but it has been able to do these things.
Mr. Putin demonstrated in the case of Syria that he was able to act unilaterally, surprise the Americans, and not get into a quagmire. This may tempt him into other adventures.
These are the kinds of factors that we have to look at, whether it's a commercial matter, a military matter, or a political matter, and in the Arctic we have no margin of error. If there are problems in the Arctic, an error will have catastrophic consequences.