We're in Afghanistan and we find ourselves, thankfully, having C-17s and ships and sending them to Haiti within a couple of days. We're in Afghanistan, where we find ourselves not just involved in a NATO operation in Libya but commanding it, which means a significantly enhanced profile to a very challenging mission. In both those cases, I would say we had enhanced—for reasons that I suggested in my comments, or hadn't shortchanged it, to put it differently—the army combat arms, the air force helicopter, and other things we needed in Afghanistan. But we had the wisdom as a country not to reduce the readiness in the navy and the air force to a level that would have precluded the Government of Canada from being able to respond to those other missions.
I would say it's an art, not a science. I would also say that the whole special forces side of the piece is new and evolving, from a Canadian context anyway, on the joint side. I would fundamentally argue for balance.
I don't think this is what the professor is saying, but I also would not sign up to train for World War III and say you'll be ready for Afghanistan. I'm not sure that's what he's saying. I think to some extent we scrambled coming out of the Cold War end and we found ourselves in the Gulf War and then in a whole bunch of things. We were really scrambling, and the rules of engagement hadn't been evolved. The UN was in mission creep, and all that kind of stuff. To some extent, part of the challenge we faced is that we had a navy, army, and air force that had training for World War III, if I can put it that way, in terms of the Cold War, trying to adjust to all these evolving things.
So you have to be combat capable, but to me that's not the same as saying we're going to train for a World War III scenario because a counter-insurgency operation like Afghanistan is quite different. You need to be able to fight, but you also need to bring those other attributes to the table, and you've got to understand the culture of the place and a whole bunch of other things.
I'll stop there. It was a really good question, actually.