The first question concerns what NATO can do about Pakistan.
If we had a united NATO.... We're going to see after the Riga conference, coming up later this month, whether NATO has the will to pull itself together—26 nations moving in the same direction—or not. If it does, then I think—and this is going to sound very hard—that Pakistan has to be confronted with the possibility of military action along its borders, which is the stationing of enough troops along the borders to be able to turn back insurgencies coming through from Pakistan.
I would say you need to put military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. Pakistanis need to know that if we're fighting a war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan is the weak link in the chain, we simply cannot allow that weak link to continue. It's as simple as that.
That's my answer with regard to Pakistan. If that's the case, I think it's more likely than not that the Government of Pakistan will back down and give us more help than they're giving us at the moment.
As far as the second question is concerned—can we be defeated by an insurgency?—I agree with the defence minister. I don't think they can beat us in a conventional war. They will use what they can to defeat our technology, our training, our morale, and our centre of gravity, which is Canadian public opinion. That's what they will do. I think that if the mission remains politically important to us and is politically doable, we need to continue doing it.
Can IEDs be defeated? They can be defeated, just as any other weapon can be defeated. One of the things we're finding out in Afghanistan is that the enemy is adopting tactics, strategies, etc., that are being pioneered elsewhere—in Iraq, Lebanon, and so on. I think we need to learn lessons from these other insurgencies much more quickly than we are. We need to close the loop from learning to decision-making, and I believe that, given time, we will.