Well, Mr. Alexander, you catch me a little off guard, because there was a point about a year and a half ago when I was asked to actually put together, in chart form, exactly the answers to precisely those questions.
I think in general we took a little darker view of the strategic outlook than the NATO strategic concept displays. However, we were more akin to the experts group that NATO had struck to do this kind of work, so I think we were in good company.
Secondly, we laid on the line some of the early thinking about the cautions about nation building, about fixing war-torn societies, in that if NATO is going to be in this business, it had better have the decision-making systems in place and it had better not make decisions without ensuring they are adequately resourced. Also, once they're resourced, if there's a fighting component to it, the NATO generals and NATO forces had better be given the means and be allowed to conduct their operations in a way that would enhance their effectiveness in theatre.
We also said in that paper that it was time—and maybe this is the origin of some of our thinking today—that NATO thought a little bit more about Canada and Canada thought a little more about NATO. NATO was one option when we selected it in 1948-49. There were two other options at the time.
One was simply that the United States and Canada join the Brussels Treaty, which had the three Benelux countries, Britain, and France. A second option was a much larger international organization that would have comprised basically many of the original members of NATO, all of the Scandinavian countries, and key members of the British Commonwealth. It would have included Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, and there were probably one or two others there.
People thought the first option was too little and the second was too much, so we settled on a NATO of 12 original members focused on Europe. That was then.
The question today is that we've now grafted on to NATO.... Well, NATO now has 28 countries. It has transformed itself. Is that still suited to Canadian needs? We flagged that in our paper. I think we were a little disappointed that there wasn't a bit more reflection of some of that kind of thinking about the future.