Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. Thank you for your distinguished records of service to our nation.
Mr. Graham, thank you very much for broaching the question of the political component of NATO. I think it's a privilege for us to have you here having served in both roles as the foreign minister and defence minister.
I want to take you back to 2003 and the decision by Canada not to participate in the Iraq coalition, which I think from my perspective and that of so many Canadians was spot on. It was the Canadian answer to that challenge—and in fact a decision that I personally benefited from when I served in Baghdad as a civilian UN official when people knew I was from Canada. I was widely known among the Iraqi population that Canada had chosen not to be part of this particular coalition.
My question is around coalitions of the willing, or coalitions of the geopolitically incentivized, versus NATO, versus the UN, and this constellation of circles within circles, or circles next to other circles that are active in various components of conflict resolution and peacekeeping. In fact, NATO was active and Baghdad has had, and still has, a training mission for the Iraqi officer corps located in the green zone. Also, the UN was present but very oddly there with the consent of the Iraqi government so Iraq could pull the plug on the UN presence at any time. There wasn't a chapter VII in the resolution in the sense of imposed UN presence.
What are your views on the evolution of these different ways of conducting peacekeeping, and what are the complexities of using coalitions versus using NATO or the UN?