To back up one step, one thing that's clear to me, and, I think, to General Thibault, is that if China for any reason decides to really pop the clutch against Taiwan, the position of the United States would be critical. We can delude ourselves as much as we want that we, Japan or Australia could help, and we probably could, but if the United States stood back and did not intervene over the course of several days, if not a week or two, there wouldn't be a lot that Japan or Australia could do—they're the two closest allies—and it would take us a while to mobilize.
Having said that, I think Canada has always been a joiner. Sometimes we join everything that's available, but I would argue that in the Indo-Pacific, we're not joining the right clubs, and we need to up our association with Japan across the board—not just militarily but politically and in trade. Australia is pretty good. There are a number of other countries that are growing at a great rate, if not in that part of the world; they're getting to be very good.
We tend not to like defence alliances. I understand why; it's not our history. In terms of dealing with China, I would submit it's the only thing they understand.
As a possible hedge against the United States not being terribly enthusiastic, I would argue the three, four or five countries that we've both talked about need to start talking yesterday about at least making sure China understands that if we can't defend against them militarily—reject their military advances per se—there will still be severe political, strategic, economic and trade sanctions instantaneously. It's not only defence. It's a whole raft of things, I would argue.