National Defence committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation and welcome the opportunity. I've prepared a background paper. I understand it has been distributed. In the next few minutes, I want to summarize some of the key points. I will devote my attention exclusively to the nuclear elem

National Defence committee  I think the issue of the nuclear deployments on European soil is shaping up to be a major issue, because of the procurement decisions that are coming along. Ultimately, that's going to be primarily a European decision, but I think Canada should make its own position clear, that t

National Defence committee  Thank you. The threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons to non-state actors, or nuclear materials, even if not in weapon form, has had the most sobering effect on the move towards stricter adherence to non-proliferation and disarmament. When Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and George Sch

National Defence committee  To quote the Lithuanian minister again, and perhaps too often, she also said, quite explicitly, after talking about the concerns about Russia, that there's no military threat from Russia.

National Defence committee  There are concerns about what may or may not be in Kaliningrad. But she did say that. I quoted Karl Deutsch. His definition of a mutual security community is one in which a pluralistic group of states abides in which the idea of them going to war with each other to solve their

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for that. I think we have to understand that NATO, as a collectivity, does not have a major role in direct arms control negotiations. NATO can play an important role in shaping the environment in which arms control negotiations take place, but those negotiati

National Defence committee  I feel compelled to introduce into this discussion at least some regard for the United Nations and the United Nations peacekeeping operations. They operate in very difficult circumstances, in very productive ways, in Sudan now—South Sudan as well as in the Nuba Mountains—and stil

National Defence committee  The United States has always had the intention of building some F-35s with dual capability; that is, they would have the capability of delivering these particular gravity bombs, which are the B61s. The B61 is also deliverable by the strategic bomber, the B-2 bomber. But the new f

National Defence committee  I am not aware of the Chinese. The Russians certainly do. As long as they maintain non-strategic weapons, they will have fighter aircraft with that capability.

National Defence committee  It's part of a long-term strategy of simply maintaining a mix of nuclear capability from strategic—air, land, and sea—to a variety of non-strategic.The United States has gone down to virtually a single non-strategic weapon, the B61. Russia keeps a wider range.

National Defence committee  As I said before, I think it's very important that Canada continue to participate in military and other kinds of operations beyond its borders and that it has the capacity to make a contribution. Having said that, I think we need to adopt a bit of modesty about what can be accomp

National Defence committee  I think the evidence is that NATO is not designed particularly for that. Its primary role is collective defence. It has adopted the role of crisis management with some mixed degree of success. The cooperative security needs a much broader canvas than what NATO can provide.

National Defence committee  I think NATO does not have a particular role to play either in South Asia or in the Middle East. I think there's broad recognition that the solutions there need to be regional, and in the case of Iran and Israel in particular. At the NPT review conference in 2010, there was a p

National Defence committee  No. I think NATO has a responsibility to help create an environment within the Euro-Atlantic community that is conducive to reducing both sub-strategic and strategic nuclear weapons. That's where it has a role. That is partly a materials control problem, but it is more a diplomac

National Defence committee  To begin, I think you're absolutely right that NATO has keen interests in the South Asia situation, and also in the Middle East. I'm saying I don't think that NATO is the institutional context within which those issues are pursued. In the case of Iran, it's P5 plus 1. So that inv