National Defence committee  Let us both take a crack at answering that. Looking back at Canadian foreign and defence policy, because they're intimately linked, I think one of the real disappointments for me is the decline in our capacity for intellectual leadership. Over the years we've talked about Canada

National Defence committee  Mr. Harris, I think you've just described the only avenue for salvation for the UN Security Council's functions. That is that the NATO countries and the countries that are democratic and think like NATO begin to work more as a block within the UN and take the UN back, in some res

National Defence committee  I'll give George a chance to answer that as well, but I think the name of the game has always been, or should have been, maybe much sooner than we've now realized, that in due course Afghanistan has to stand on its own feet and look after its own security and deal with its own in

National Defence committee  Let me make one final point about NATO, and that is that of the 28 members, 26 of them are European. Of those European members, some are large and some are quite small. As long as they continue, as they have for a very long time now, to understand that what they have in common an

National Defence committee  I can give you a very short answer on ballistic missile defence. They use it I think as a political football. Back in Lisbon, barely 18 months ago, there was a nice comfortable agreement worked up with the Russians to cooperate on ballistic missile defence. What's happened in the

National Defence committee  It's an underappreciated, looming problem, Russia. I served in the Soviet Union back in the seventies. My colleague, Chris Alexander, was there much more recently than I was. There was a sense that cooperation was going to be possible only at the margin. Maybe we could do a lit

National Defence committee  I'm not quite sure I got the gist of your question. Canada's ability to delivery in what particular—

National Defence committee  Well, if you begin with the first task, which is the defence of the NATO area, the Euro-Atlantic area, our role was absolutely critical early on. We had brigades stationed in Europe, we had an air force stationed in Europe, and we had heavy naval commitments to the defence of Eur

National Defence committee  Is it to fight insurgents or stay back and train Afghans to fight insurgents? I think there's almost no appetite for forces to fight insurgents after 2014.

National Defence committee  I think a simple way of thinking about NATO is that three functions are performed under the title of NATO. The first function basically is as a permanent diplomatic conference in Washington and around the North Atlantic Council table. All the governments are represented there by

National Defence committee  There are two kinds of information sharing. The first is the constant discussions and sharing of analysis and assessments that go on among governments and around the NATO committee tables. The North Atlantic Council has several supporting committee operations. That is fairly fran

National Defence committee  We work at two levels in Afghanistan. First, we train Afghan forces so that they will be able to ensure their own security. At the other level, we try to promote more generally the country's development. NATO's strategy is to ensure— focus on training the Afghan forces over th

National Defence committee  We're not proposing that Canada abandon good works. What we're saying is, let's divide up the labour—because we're diffusing a lot of effort, and there are other people who can spend more time, maybe more effectively, doing certain kinds of things—but also let's know what the bus

National Defence committee  The UN is the context for NATO. To the extent that the UN doesn't function, NATO is our second-best solution.

National Defence committee  I would argue with you, sir, that we—