National Defence committee  Arms control isn't necessarily the best way of dealing with it. Right now, I'm afraid it's all about enhanced deterrence and responding to perceived threats. Arms control, is not, if you like, the first tool in the box right now for dealing with that.

National Defence committee  I agree. For example, you're looking at the Russian view—certainly newspeak—of de-escalating conflict through the use of nuclear weapons. When you're dealing with somebody who's talking in those terms, arms control is frankly a bit more distant than we would all like it to be. Everybody would prefer to see stability with fewer levels of armaments, and everybody would love to live in a world without nuclear weapons.

National Defence committee  Yes. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly was the first international organization to formally sanction the Russians for their actions in Crimea and then, subsequently, Donbass. It took us all a bit by surprise, because although we expected sanctions to be imposed, Russia, which was then one of our partner countries, in fact had its status removed.

National Defence committee  I don't know about the Canadian officers. One of the things that has changed the threat environment is the unexpected rate of progress in North Korea, where they seem to have acquired probably some Russian design work that has really enabled them to make huge progress with missile engine technology.

National Defence committee  You've been reading my bio. I actually started my professional life, my academic life, in physics, so I love the technology stuff, basically. The fundamental shift, of course, is that since NATO was founded, there has been the rise of the IT revolution, which has utterly transformed the way warfare is conducted.

National Defence committee  Okay.

National Defence committee  I wish I knew the answer. It's staggering, for example, that the B-52 will have gone from the drawing board to being out of service in 80 years. It's absolutely astonishing, with some weapons systems, how long they're in service. Of course, when you have a rate of innovation in IT, where something's obsolete in two years, and yet we have this incredibly long development cycle for certain hardware, we are going to think much more in terms of learning lessons from civilian industry and being able to do much more plug-and-play and life-cycle upgrading.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Chairman. I will do my utmost to be as succinct as James was. I would like to talk about the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, because it's a dimension of NATO membership that has, obviously, from the name, a very specific benefit to parliamentarians, and it's directly relevant to that.