That's a good question indeed.
Let me talk about Russia for half a minute. I think we are all genetically coded to think of Russia as a superpower and a superpower that is re-emerging, but if you look at the Russian GDP, it's about the equivalent to that of Italy or Australia. It's a second-class power on its way to third-class status. It has huge demographic and economic issues. Now it's scaling back on its defence expenditures, and the transit of the Kuznetsov was perhaps in a way an icon of pretension but not of real substance. The Russians in fact are relying heavily on the Chinese and doing exercises in the Pacific.
I think what we're seeing in the Mediterranean, for example, is the beginning of the new phenomenon, the osmotic pressure into Europe as a result of what's happening in Africa. Africa is going to be increasingly critical in terms of what's happening in Europe in the future. We can see the efforts of the Italian navy to deal with that issue, which have been inadequate because they didn't get the support from other European powers.
There are a series of forces at work particularly related to climate change that are going to change the dynamics of international politics. Navies, I think, will still play a significant part, in humanitarian assistance, for example. I was talking to a senior colleague in Bangladesh, where they're expecting over the next quarter century to lose upwards of a third of the land area as a result of rising sea levels and storm inundations. There will be a lot of roles, I think, for navy vessels. We saw that with HMCS Vancouver and its disaster relief exercises in New Zealand, real-life exercises.