There are two parts to that. The alliance recognizes that there are differences in economic capability between nations. So they are taxed, if you will, for common funding programs based on the size of their economy, and so on.
I led the NATO certification team to Slovenia in 2004, and I recall speaking to their chief of defence staff. They were making very modest contributions, I think it was about 300 to 400 people in total to various missions—not just Afghanistan, but that represented a contribution from an armed force of 4,000 in total. It was still a sizeable contribution from a percentage standpoint. So you have to be careful when you look at the levels of those contributions.
What really worries us—and we do address the fear of a two-tier NATO—is the willingness to commit and to look beyond the European geographical construct, and also the difficulties that happen in a particular mission. In Libya, for example—and again, our colleague, Dave Perry, will be talking about this on Thursday—there was an entire rebalancing of AWAC crews once Germany decided to support the mission politically but not militarily. So AWAC crews that were assigned to the Libyan mission had German aircrews taken away and moved to Afghanistan, which were then backfilled by others. Those are some of the things that are different.
The third part that concerns us is a willingness to look beyond. We've identified a number of countries that seem to have a more global view than some other nations within the alliance. That has become a bit of a conflict within, because there are nations like ours that look beyond their own borders and other partner nations that do, but then there are others that don't, either from their own interpretation of interest or their ability to economically support it.
Are there two tiers emerging? Absolutely.