In the wake of World War II we had a million people under arms, the fourth-largest armed forces in the world. We basically worked on that very positive impression with our allies and friends all the way up arguably until the 1980s. Then we started to fail, not only in the issues of defence and foreign affairs, but we started to look really inward, in my humble opinion. I think it's time. As Mr. Fadden has said, we have to be out there and be seen. There is much talk about sending more peacekeepers out. Well, there's not that much peace to keep. I've been on about five peacekeeping missions, shot at on three of them. There's not that much peace out there.
The other aspect is that we have to be very closely affiliated and allied with our closest allies, the United States, in particular, for obvious economic and trade reasons. Also, when we look at the Pacific, we have to look at maybe AUKUS, which has been signed off. Just recently the Australians and Japanese have basically made an agreement. We have to reinforce ourselves in NATO. We pulled ourselves out in the 1980s. We wanted a peace dividend, and we paid through the nose. The armed forces are in terrible shape, quite frankly.
It's a terrible thing to say. There was a shakeup because of Afghanistan. We got monies, fortunately, through that. That's not one way of doing it. If you want a military, it has to be prepared to fight at a drop of a hat, particularly in today's world.
We've seen the panic within the EU and NATO just over what has happening in Ukraine, which is indeed problematic. If anything has happened out of this, all of a sudden, Putin, in the eyes of his people, is seen as a real player, because literally everybody in the EU and NATO went to tug their forelocks to him. He's won an impressive psychological victory by just deploying troops.
From what I've heard as of today, this withdrawal is essentially a redeployment along the border. That is something to be waited and seen to be confirmed.