That's a perfect question.
I would say it's an ongoing process in cases where the situation evolves. Afghanistan is a great case in point. The start point was counter-terrorism operations to eliminate the threat—the Taliban—from government, which happened extremely well. The follow-on operation over time was to extend Afghan governance so that it was competent in its own right. That's really what the operation was. There were various strategies used to achieve that, ultimately the best being a counter-insurgency strategy. But the job was to help Afghans extend their governance capacity across sectors such that, once it were extended, it would be successfully serving their population and thereby, by its very nature, eclipse the fuel that causes insurgencies to mount.
That evolved, and I think one thing one must keep in mind is that there are a lot of starting points to conflict, but they don't always stay there. I know you are aware of this, but the forces at play, be they against you or with you, change. In Afghanistan, they changed a lot. An insurgency blossomed because there wasn't enough extant capacity in Afghan governance that was credible enough, that could extend far enough, to squelch the start of an insurgency. The flames were fanned, and it grew.
In the military, we go through all sorts of potential scenarios—this could happen, that could happen.... We are doing it now with Libya. Libya could go in a whole bunch of different ways. We try to understand what could happen, given certain factors at play. I think our interaction with, as you say, government is frank and open. The CDS ultimately is the one who provides military advice to government. That really is the answer to your question. There are all sorts of supporters, but ultimately it comes down to the Chief of Defence Staff saying, this is what we can do, this is what that would look like, this is the kind of success it may or may not bring, and here are the risks.
I wouldn't characterize it as a negotiation, sir. I would characterize it as a pretty frank and honest exchange. We don't necessarily say, at the beginning of a conflict, if this happened, what about this? We don't work that way. We evolve, and government either has us evolve or does not have us evolve—and then we would leave or would do something completely different, which is rather what we've seen in Afghanistan. The counter-insurgency strategy had reached a certain point—we knew it would—and the U.S. surge had been effective. Kandahar was relatively quiet compared with years past, I can tell you. It was a good time to start to invest in the institutions that supported governance in Afghanistan.
Sometimes this happens as a result of forethought, predetermined actions, all sorts of thinking, and sometimes you are just trying to do the right thing when another right thing to do appears before you. It's not always fore-ordained.
