Chair, thank you very much.
Thank you to our witnesses for being with us this afternoon.
I have three categories of questions, and the substance of each of them would very quickly outstrip the time available, so I'm just looking for some opening thoughts to guide the committee as we potentially dive more deeply into any of these three areas.
My first area, Mr. Chair, is the issue of alliance formation and burden sharing. Professor Kimball has written extensively on this over the last decade and a half, I believe, so I'm going to ask questions of Professor Kimball to start.
Professor Kimball, in light of recent events surrounding Ukraine—the crisis, the military intervention and all that—what is your view with respect to the political component of alliance formation around NATO? If you observed changes in the last few weeks, how radical are they?