The best example that we have of what armed forces are ultimately is an insurance policy. Ultimately, then, you choose to evaluate your future risk. As you say, it's very unpredictable. You can have a general sense of what kinds of dangers you face and what you might want to be able to do, but there's no real means of being able to predict exactly what you need to do. I would be very careful when it comes to future analysis and predicting where the world is going to be. Generally speaking, we get it wrong, and we tend to need to then be able to adapt to different circumstances.
But I think you can make certain basic judgments. I will just give you an anecdote. One of the most expensive things that you can get, as many of you may know, in terms of home insurance in Canada, is earthquake insurance. Now, you may choose to get it, you may choose to pay for that, but in all likelihood you may not need it. Therefore, you make a calculation based on what you think you may need and think you may be able to acquire. If you are very risk-averse you will pay for it, and therefore you feel protected to the degree that you can.
It's very similar with the capabilities that you invest in your armed forces. In principle, we could say you never know who might attack Canada with a nuclear weapon, so should we build a nuclear deterrent? But we've made the calculation, looking at our allies and looking at the nuclear umbrella under which we exist, that this is not a capability we require.
Similarly, we may arrive at the conclusion that there are other capabilities that we do not require. That really is an assessment of the international security environment as it exists and what your fundamental priorities are--the defence of Canada and the defence of North America.
But then looking overseas, as much as we are affected by events that happen internationally, we also need to be realistic to what degree we can actually affect those events versus our larger allies. If our larger allies tell us that we would be a much better resource to help them in X, Y, and Z, then why do we also insist on maintaining capabilities to do A, B, and C internationally? So this is what is involved with speaking to your allies about what they need from you, in terms of larger cooperation, instead of taking it for granted that the world is a dangerous place, so we need to be able to do everything.
For a country like Canada, that is really prohibitive and it's not really in keeping with a calculated risk assessment and a calculated assessment of how Canada works internationally--namely, with allies, and much larger allies that have the capacity to affect events much more than we do.