Yes, sir, and thank you for the question. It's a very important question.
The way I see it, there are three different circles of nations at NATO, and this is without regard for the amount of money they spend or the amount of money they contribute to the overall budget. The United States is in a category of its own. Then you have countries such as France, Germany, and the U.K., due to the size of their armed forces and the effort they invest in trying to equip, adapt, exercise, and modernize their own forces. Then you have another group of nations, of which Canada is a member, that is actually influential. Therefore, a decision cannot be made without Canada being in the picture. There's a lot of business that's being done in corridors before decisions are made, and Canada is always part of that.
What I was worried about and what I witnessed was the cohesiveness, or the growing cohesive approach, of European nations, as a European bloc, at NATO during council discussions, which actually leaves us squeezed somewhere between a huge United States and an EU group that is not yet powerful but actually meaningful. We're staying there with Turkey, for instance, not being a member of the European Union and having no vocation of being one, and not being the United States. I guess what that taught me was that we need to know exactly what we want and what we expect—