National Defence committee  There's effectively no formal relationship between NATO and Pakistan. There have been ongoing discussions with Pakistan because of Afghanistan. Certainly, U.S. chiefs of defence staff have regularly met with their Pakistani counterparts, and the nuclear weapons issue was always a

National Defence committee  I might add a little bit to that, on a couple of points. Tactical nuclear weapons have been a subject of U.S.–Russia negotiations for some time. It was to be the next stage of negotiations following the strategic agreement. The Russians have never wished to go down that road. The

National Defence committee  I agree with that point. The problem with the 2% is, what counts as defence spending? That's relatively elastic.

National Defence committee  —so you know what that's all about. In addition to that, is what you have deployable? You may spend the 2%, but if it can't leave your own territory, it's useless as an alliance commitment to collective defence, for instance. Also, if you don't have the political will to deplo

National Defence committee  That's a good question. The U.S. was initially reluctant to do anything in Libya. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said famously at the time that for the U.S. to involve itself in another Muslim country, it would have to have its head examined, so he was opposed. Secretary Clin

National Defence committee  Correct, and very few allies did. I think the number of those who did the strike was somewhere around seven or eight countries, something like that.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. If I might, the air campaign in Kosovo was a mirror image of the Libya air campaign, to the extent that Canada was one of, I think, six countries that actually did the strike mission. After the U.S., Canada led most of the sorties in the Kosovo air campaign.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. I agree, really, with everything that Dick Fadden has just said, but I'll look at these issues from the perspective of eight years altogether at NATO headquarters. I was there as the deputy permanent representative from 1998 to 2002, which was dur