National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, my time, unfortunately, is up as well, as I must leave at 1 p.m.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure I quite understand your question, but let me try. Russia still has substantial nuclear weapons, but they have fewer than they did before. If I were a European member of NATO, I would be very concerned that there not be an imbalance. I would be very concerned that my

National Defence committee  Coalitions of the willing, which we have been part of in the past. Realistically they would probably involve a U.S. command structure into which other nations would fit. It would obviously help if we were thinking this way to undertake exercises with some of the nations in the Pa

National Defence committee  Many of the countries in NATO that participated in the Libyan operation ran out of bombs very quickly. Some of them didn't have pilots. Some of them refused to participate in certain aspects of the mission. Some of the communications in aircraft could not talk to other aircraft.

National Defence committee  I believe so, yes.

National Defence committee  Clearly, there would be challenges. We do have close intelligence relationships with the United States, a Pacific power, with Australia and New Zealand, Pacific powers. The challenges arise when it comes to the countries I mentioned originally—Japan, Korea, Singapore—and I suspec

National Defence committee  It's been more than 60 years since the founding of NATO. While I'm inclined to agree that Russia is a threat of a kind to eastern Europe, it is a threat of a different kind than it has been for most of the last 60 years. Is Russia liable to send troops into eastern Europe tomorr

National Defence committee  I wouldn't for a minute suggest that we neglect the Russians. I would suggest that we assess properly what threats there might be from them and react to them in an appropriate way. We may have a different idea of what those threats might be. That's all. I think in the Arctic, at

National Defence committee  To go to the other part of your question, if I may, NATO still thinks of itself in a Cold War model—state-to-state conflicts. That's what it was set up for, and I think that's still largely the mindset. The comments by a Lithuanian foreign minister that my colleague mentioned su

National Defence committee  Maybe we can buy them cheaper. There are many ways of fighting wars now, and I think NATO needs to be able to prepare for those.

National Defence committee  I guess the thrust of what I was saying in my prepared comments was that NATO is not necessarily the best vehicle to approach the Pacific. Not all NATO countries have interest in the Pacific. Not all NATO countries care about it. The reality is that we of course have a very lar

National Defence committee  Probably not. It's not the right way for us to approach this.

National Defence committee  In my view, we're not spending enough to keep up with what we need to do. We have caught up a good deal in filling the holes in the military, but we still have too few personnel. We still are remarkably short of equipment in certain areas. And of course we are effectively out o

National Defence committee  It doesn't any longer.

National Defence committee  I was careful not to say that we should leave NATO. I was trying to suggest that if we are turning our attention towards the Pacific, it's a bit outside NATO's usual sphere of operations, and maybe we should be looking for people who share our values in that part of the world. Th