Let me suggest to you that it's not doctrine that I'm talking about. We've had a lot of military folks here talking about doctrine in this context of readiness, and I think it has limited ability to help us, frankly, with this study.
David Bercuson was here the other day, as you no doubt know, and he mentioned this issue of policy or what he called a set of principles. I guess what I'm asking for is a very clear understanding of what our national interests are for military purposes in terms that others have talked about. How far does Canada project its borders, for example?
One of the troubling things, I think, is that in a lot of the conversations we end up in on this issue, we slip beyond defence broadly into discussions about a kind of economically integrated world. We look at the world as being entirely integrated in terms of national security issues, and therefore we essentially need to project our borders right around the world, which doesn't end up helping us. It gets us back into the trap or challenge you talked about, that we then have to be ready for the unpredictable.
Let me get a comment on this briefly. To me, the issue seems to be that we need a very clear statement about what our national interests are from a military perspective or a foreign affairs perspective, and it's only on that basis that we can intelligibly discuss readiness.