We agree, and it's not a sequential or a linear series of steps, and one isn't to the exclusion of the other, so let me just clarify that really quickly.
Yes, there are partnerships that NATO has established. There are partnerships for peace. There were certainly partnerships that were much trumpeted for the Libyan mission: the inclusion of the UAE, non-combat support by Morocco, and so on and so forth. Those are all good and valuable things, but they are punctual and tactical, if you will. They're not strategic in terms of the partnerships that are formed.
When you put a strategic concept in a document that is supposed to provide guidance for an organization for the next decade, it's incumbent on that document to look at the trends that are unfolding in the world and try to anticipate its partnerships as a consequence. So, yes, there should be smaller, punctual partnerships, which obviously are valuable, but we did talk about the long-term strategic shift in Asia and incorporating some of those.
Now with respect to Asia and the Americas and certainly Africa—and we're seeing South Sudan materialize as a hot spot right now, which we identified as well in the strategic outlook paper—there is a role for NATO in these places. NATO's strategic concept in itself talks about mobile, deployable, joint forces, including the NATO response force at a strategic distance. It talks about protection of transit areas and lines of communication and energy infrastructure. But aside from making those statements inside the concept, we're not seeing advancement of that discussion, and it's in our interest to advance that.
What we would like, first of all, is for NATO to more seriously address the role it has to play in places like Africa and Asia, because as we said, the border is on the west. We just don't see that happening right now.