Well, if you begin with the first task, which is the defence of the NATO area, the Euro-Atlantic area, our role was absolutely critical early on. We had brigades stationed in Europe, we had an air force stationed in Europe, and we had heavy naval commitments to the defence of Europe. Clearly, over 60 years, that has progressively disappeared. We're not there any more in that respect. So as far as the defence of Europe specifically is concerned, I'd say we're absent, with good reason.
On the second function, crisis management, I'd like to make a distinction between NATO and its members. NATO as an organization has organizational and structural problems of all kinds. It's only as robust and as effective as its members allow it to be. Individual members can be a great deal more active and effective on their own or in small groups. What you've seen in some respects has been individual NATO members either leading the whole organization or leading some of the organization, or creating “coalitions of the willing”, as they are called, of countries that are both within NATO and outside NATO, to get things done.
I think on that front, Canada has been a very important contributor to the collective missions that we have believed in. As a group, we didn't believe in Iraq, but we certainly believed in the Afghanistan mission. We believed in the Balkans missions. We believed in the Libyan mission.
Once we overcame some of the deficiencies of the dark years in which Canadian defence was underfunded and undermanned, we turned out—as most of us kind of suspected we would—to be first-class soldiers and first-class contributors in a highly professional way to solving problems.
So I think we do quite a good job there. I wish our diplomacy was as robust and as entrepreneurial as our military activities have been.
The third one has to do with partnerships. I think we're playing a very large role—we can probably claim as strong a role as any NATO member—in trying to drag NATO into understanding that there are requirements for partnerships. In Afghanistan, for instance, all 28 members of NATO, one way or the other, have been involved. But there are another 20 countries involved in Afghanistan, and not in small ways, either. We're saying that if this is the world of democracies working in action, why is it that we consider these other 20 countries as kind of second-class citizens? We maybe invite them to some of our meetings at NATO, and so on.
What we've been saying is that we have to firm up something with these countries. If NATO as an organization will not do that, we have to figure out some other way to get that done.