Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 21 - Evidence, May 5, 2005 - Afternoon session
HALIFAX, Thursday, May 5, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 2:32 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This is a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence.
We are very pleased to be here in Halifax, a city with a long naval and military tradition. We have certainly enjoyed the morning and had an opportunity to learn a great deal.
I would like to take the opportunity to introduce the members of the committee. On my right is the distinguished senator, Michael Forrestall, from Nova Scotia. Senator Forestall served the constituents of Dartmouth for 37 years, first as a member of the House of Commons, then as their senator. While in the House of Commons, he served as the official Opposition Defence Critic from 1966-76, and he is a member of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
At the end of the table is Senator Jim Munson from Ontario, a trusted journalist and former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Chrétien before he was called to the Senate in 2003. Senator Munson has twice been nominated for Gemini awards in recognition of excellence in journalism.
On my left at the end of the table is Senator Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia, an accomplished educator, with an extensive record of community involvement, including serving as Vice-chair of the Halifax Dartmouth Port Development Commission. She is the Chair of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association and a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
We will be joined in a few moments by Senator Pierre Claude Nolin.
Our committee has been mandated by the Senate to examine security and defence and the need for a national security policy. We have produced the following reports since 2002: Canadian Security and Military Preparedness; Defence of North America — A Canadian Responsibility; An Update on Canada's Military Crisis — A Review From The Bottom Up; The Myth of Security At Canada's Airports; Canada's Coastlines — The Longest Under-Defended Borders In The World; National Emergencies; Canada's Fragile Front Lines; and most recently, The Canadian Security Guidebook — 2005 Edition.
We are now in the midst of a detailed review of Canadian defence policy and have been holding hearings in every province and engaging with Canadians to determine their national interest, what they see as Canada's principal threats, and how they would like the government to respond to those threats.
Canadians have been very forthright in expressing their views on national security. We will continue working on this review throughout the summer in order to forge a consensus on the type of military Canadians envision in the future.
We have before us three very distinguished witnesses who will provide us with a commentary on the defence review.
Professor Denis Stairs is currently McCulloch Professor in Political Science at Dalhousie University. He was the founding Director of Dalhousie's Centre of Foreign Policy Studies from 1970-75. He served as chair of his department from 1980-85, and served as Dalhousie's Vice-President (Academic and Research) from 1988-93. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and sits on numerous boards and councils. Doctor Stairs specializes in Canadian foreign policy, Canada-U.S. relations and similar subjects.
We also have with us Professor Danford Middlemiss. He has been in the Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University, since 1981. He is currently the Honours Coordinator for the Department of Political Science and will be returning as director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies in July.
Dr. Middlemiss has taught courses in international security, contemporary civilian-military relations, and Canadian defence policy for over 30 years. He has published numerous articles on economic and other aspects of Canadian defence policy and Canadian Maritime policy.
We also have with us Vice-Admiral (Ret'd) Jim King. Vice-Admiral King retired from the Canadian Forces in September 2002 after completing a four-year appointment as Canada's Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee in Permanent Session in Brussels. He had a long and distinguished career in the navy, including two appointments in command and senior staff positions in headquarters in Halifax and Ottawa in Personnel and Training, Force Development and Policy and Communications. He is currently working as an independent consultant, and is also active as a research fellow at Dalhousie Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, and as a lecturer and senior mentor at both the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College in Toronto and the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.
We are very pleased to have you here, gentlemen. We understand all three of you have a brief opening statement. Please proceed.
Mr. Denis Stairs, Professor, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University: Mr. Chairman, I want to again thank you and your colleagues for inviting me to join you here this afternoon, especially in such illustrious company. I am particularly honoured because your committee routinely does first class work, and I can assure all of you that your reports and proceedings are very carefully studied and much appreciated by specialists, academic and otherwise, in the defence and security fields. I hope you never feel that your work is in vain because people in universities and elsewhere analyze it very carefully.
I am here today to offer a few very broad comments on what I must say are some very broad topics within the timeframe of five or six minutes. As a preliminary to a more free flowing exchange, I hope you will understand that this limits me to a succession of what I think are blindingly obvious generalities, which I have itemized in bullet form on a single page, a copy of which you have before you.
First, the primary threat to Canadian security is not by terrorism, per se, or by some of the more exotic unconventional threats that we all talk about these days, but it seems to me, by the United States of America. The Americans do not think of themselves as a security problem for Canada, of course, but in reality it seems to me, they cannot avoid being so; it is the inevitable by-product of who they are, what they are, and where they are. More specifically, they are the world's only superpower, which makes them a target of attack. They are also a very large market, and for Canadians, an indispensable one, and they reside next door.
In practical terms, the simple reality is that the private prosperity of all Canadians, along with the government revenues that finance delivery of their very cherished public services, are now almost completely dependant on the speedy and efficient movement of goods, people and services back and forth between the two countries.
In my view, the primary purpose of Canadian security policy in the current environment, a purpose that is deeply rooted in the most vital of our national interests, is to persuade the Americans that they do not have to tighten their border controls and thereby strangle the movement of Canada-U.S. commerce in order to secure the safety of their citizens.
Some observers might regard this as an embarrassing circumstance, but the truth of the matter is that Canadians have welcomed our condition because they know it is essential to both the creation and the preservation of their wealth, no matter what some critics might be inclined to say. Moreover, our vulnerability to the potential side effects of American security policy is a vulnerability that all Canadians share. It cannot, it seems to me, be reasonably argued that it should concern the right more than the left, the owners of capital more than the sellers of labour, the rich more than the poor, the busily employed more than the jobless or the pensioned off. If this one goes wrong, everyone in Canada gets to feel the pain.
Our interest as a country in this issue is therefore real and it is not rhetorical, it is not cosmetic, it drives policy. It is far more than a nice-to-have or a nice-to-do. In my view, maintaining a reasonably effective working relationship with the United States is, for this reason, the single most important imperative in Canadian foreign policy and in our security affairs. That is why, at the bureaucratic level, the response in Ottawa to 9/11 came so quickly and so effectively. It is also why the reassurance of Americans on the homeland security front should continue, in my view, to be the primary preoccupation of Canadian security policy broadly conceived.
However useful and however much they support our diplomacy abroad and our sense of self-esteem at home, Canadian security policies overseas are not nearly so central to our interests. They are exercises in what we used to call, in the inter-war period, ``indirect defence.'' That is, they can contribute to the security of Canadians at home by helping to stabilize and contain conflicts abroad. In effect, they help with the task of keeping such conflicts at a relatively safe distance. They also serve ancillary purposes, for example, adding to the credibility of our diplomacy at the United Nations and elsewhere. They construct a sense of national accomplishments within Canada itself, demonstrating to new Canadian minorities that Ottawa is not indifferent to the problems confronting their former compatriots and their respective countries of origin, and so on.
The truth of the matter is that these are not imperatives, they are essentially elective or voluntarily. We do not have to do them at all, and at rock bottom, it has been so hard to maintain traditional defence expenditures at levels that most specialists in the field would regard as reasonable.
In this general context of overseas security deployments, however broadly these are conceived, it has been suggested that I might venture a brief comment on the debate over multilateralism as a principle and prerequisite for Canadian international action. That question needs to be addressed at two separate levels.
On the first and most fundamental level, Canada, at the end of the Second World War, was a strong supporter of multilateralism as represented largely by the United Nations, the UN specialized agencies and the Bretton Woods system, in part, because it wished to promote the institutionalization of international politics. Without institutions, politics operate essentially in accord with the laws of the jungle; might is right and the strongest win. This is true within societies as Thomas Hobbs knew very well, and as our recent experience of failed states clearly demonstrates, but it is also true on a regional or global scale.
Creating effective international institutions was thus seen as an essential step in replacing a brutal international politics with an orderly international politics, a politics in which serious disputes were settled by war, with a politics in which disputes could be settled by negotiation and by give and take in a context of a rural ordered environment. In general, of course, this sort of arrangement is very much in the interests of almost any smaller power that is fundamentally well off, a power, that is relatively secure, satisfied with its borders and exceptionally rich.
Canada warms to an orderly environment abroad for much the same reason as persons of property are drawn to policies of law and order in their environments at home. Michael Ignatieff has recently described this Canadian preference for international stability as an international manifestation of its affection enshrined in its constitution for peace, order and good government. It should be clearly understood that peace, order and the rule of law are conservative values. We like them as much as we do because they are profoundly in our interest.
From the security point of view, Canada is a status quo power. Given the limited capabilities at its disposal, it has no acquisitive interest that aggressive military action would serve. Now, this is obviously a fortunate circumstance, but it is useful to remember that the circumstances of others are not necessarily the same.
On the second level, multilateralism is simply a strategy or, in specific situations, a tactic. In concrete terms, Canada has often preferred to operate in multilateral arenas because it can sometimes provide useful opportunities for working in coalition with others to advance its interests. In some cases, the most stunningly perhaps in the context of the Law of the Sea negotiations years ago, and more recently in reference to the landmine treaty, it has been able to exploit such opportunities to serve its own purposes even against the opposition of countries as powerful as the United States of America.
Here, however, it needs to be understood that everyone else does pretty much the same thing as Canada does when it suits them to do so. In short, multilateralism is not a matter of constitutional principle, but of political gamesmanship, and every power plays the same game. In my view, we make a mistake if we elevate the multilateralist aspiration to the status of an ideological imbedded proposition. There are contexts in which we should pursue it, but there are also contexts in which we should not and in which we in fact have not.
Finally, it has been suggested that I might wish to comment briefly on my reaction to the international policy statement with particular reference to security policy. While I think the paper as a whole, including all four or five documents, is a little uneven, I have to say that it is much better than I expected, not least because it keeps a lot of the now fashionable but ill-advised puffery about Canadian values and the like in reasonable check. Among the specialty papers, it seems to me that the defence paper is easily the best.
Now, perhaps the folk in DND had an easier time of it because the nature of their operation makes it possible for them to be quite concrete. The prose is clear. The analysis of the international environment is straightforward and sensible and the discussion of the practical implications for the Canadian Forces is quite well defined.
On the home front, the department's commitment to working with other government agencies and dealing with national security threats is also very welcome, and I certainly think prudent.
Having said that, I have to make the obvious point, and I know you have heard it before, that many of the details still need fleshing out. It is not quite clear, for example, how the new Canada Command will actually function and how successful it will be in generating the integrated operational structures that the document envisages down the road. I suspect that there will be very substantial challenges involved, not only in recruiting, but perhaps more importantly, in training the new intakes of personnel that the government is committed to attracting to the uniformed services.
Many of the important procurement initiatives are vague especially concerning the navy support vessels, the replacements for the current fleet of destroyers and frigates, and the acquisition of new and expanded airlift capacity.
And finally, we are talking about expenditures to which, for the most part, the government is committing itself several years down the road. This government, however, may not be in a position to fulfill that commitment, and even if events prove otherwise, I would not be at all surprised if competing demands on the public purse, to say nothing of the bureaucratic morass to which all procurement activity now seems to lead, resulted in prolonged delays.
I do not want to be too cynical about this, but as a broad generalization, I think it would be fair to say that the last defence statement of the white Paper or green Paper variety, to have a significant impact on the defence establishment for good or evil was Paul Hellyer's White Paper on Defence in 1964. I will believe it when I see it, even though I am persuaded that the current minister and the CDS are both strongly committed to implementing the program of action contained in that document.
Mr. Chairman, my comments have been neither detailed nor nuanced, but I hope, at least, that they have stoked up the fire a little.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Professor Stairs.
Professor Middlemiss, the floor is your.
Mr. Danford W. Middlemiss, Professor, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University: Thank you all very much for this opportunity to appear before you. I again commend you for continuing to take the initiative in exploring these very important issues relating to Canadian national security.
I am glad Mr. Stairs started with a very broad overview of the international policy statement, because I intend to outline some of my very preliminary reactions to the new Defence Policy Statement. I think it is going to flag some issues that I believe warrant further investigation by your committee.
I will to focus on three main aspects of this paper: its sense of realism, its ambiguity about interim steps, and some of its unanswered questions. None of this will come as news this committee.
There is in the paper a definite ratcheting down of expectations about Canada's stature and ability to influence global affairs in the future. There are no expectations that the Canadian Forces will be able to do a lot more with the funds it can reasonably expect in the future.
The paper admits that Canada is no longer in the premier league of militaries. There are no expectations of major command leadership roles in the future, but rather only component orsub-component geographic commands.
The paper also sets out reasonable criteria for the selective and strategic use of the forces with a view to making a difference, when and if we can. In the new Chief of Defence Staff's parlance:
We are no longer preparing to fight the Bear as we did during the Cold War — we are now preparing to fight many Snakes in a non-contiguous battlespace where enemy combatants mingle freely with non-combatants and humanitarian aid workers.
The paper also outlines a fairly clear and coherent vision of what a transformed Canadian Forces end-state should look like 10 years to 15 years down the road. It will be restructured into a more capable, fully integrated set of units that can produce more focused effects by being more effective, relevant, and responsive.
The various arrows in our military quiver seem to make very good sense from an operational standpoint, and there are very clear readiness and sustainment benchmarks for us to judge just how well the Forces have attained these goals down the road.
There are also sensible command and institutionalre-alignments, both with respect to NDHQ and the new Team Maple Leaf or CANCOM. These are long overdue in my view, and very do-able in the short term.
The paper also acknowledges the reality of the importance of the Canada-U.S. continental relationship, and it accepts that tough choices will have to be made about future capital acquisitions, and in this regard it looks very promising for the army, and especially the navy, but far less so for the air force.
The paper fails to convey the reality of just how desperate the situation is for the Canadian Forces right now. Your committee has certainly pointed this out in its well-done studies. The paper talks about transformation, but not about the crisis status of the Canadian Forces today. The paper is ambiguous and vague about interim steps.
It also does not give much indication about how the forces will survive financially until the promised budget increases kick in three-to-five years down the road. The question is; how do we get from here to there? All indications are that the military itself would prefer additional ramp-up funds in years two and three of the projected budget. There is an absorption problem immediately, but I think they feel that they are a little short two to three years down the road.
The paper suggests that enhanced North American defence cooperation is imminent, perhaps along the lines of a maritime NORAD, and yet the timelines for negotiating are very tight, especially if this is all to happen by the next NORAD renewal in May 2006.
Will the promised $2.8 billion in increased funding for the forces be enough to cover all of the transformation goals set out in this new paper? The plan, to be fair, has not yet been costed, and all indications are that the final bill will easily exceed $20 billion.
Will the defence of Canada role really end up being the number one priority for the Canadian Forces? This is clearly stated asthe objective. We have heard this before with respect tothe 1971 white paper, but we found out then that the real priority lay elsewhere. Again, the true emphasis will be revealed to us, I think, when the capital acquisition plan for this paper is tabled later this year, and I suspect personally, that once again, most of the funding will go to the Canadian Forces overseas contingency plans and operations rather than to the domestic arena. After all, the former are still the most demanding operationally.
Where will the main deployment base be for the rapid-reaction Standing Contingency Task Force? Which coast will it be closest to? This basing decision is vital, as it will greatly define the true limits of Canada's interventionary reach.
While the paper offers a sensible rationalization and transformation template for the forces, will our political leaders fully understand and act upon what this paper demands of them?
They need to deliver and continue to deliver on their funding promises. There will be many incremental bumps funding to come to make this paper a reality. My sense is that the Canadian people are ready to support a sensible plan such as this, and they understand the crisis of the Canadian Forces. My caveat would be, no more temporizing, you politicians. Get on with the job that we elect you to do, and lead. This leaves out some immediate politicians here that are not elective, of course.
I think politicians, as well, need to be cautioned to be carefully selective in committing our forces to overseas deployments. Why? Because there are only a limited number of arrows laid out in our military quiver for the future, and these units, however capable they end up being, cannot be engaged at home and abroad simultaneously. There is a finite and explicitly limited sustainment capacity built into these new units in any case.
It is important to take the politics out of major defence procurement. These political aspects are not the fault of the Canadian Forces and yet they are crippling them. Some examples are the long delays over the maritime helicopter replacement, the new submarines, and fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. The serious issues relating to the cumbersome procurement process is a subject that this committee should explore in greater detail.
From a military standpoint, this paper represents awell-designed and coherent blueprint for the future. It is quite clearly the new teams' vision and the roles make sense given global and domestic circumstances. The posture is logical and attainable, but it will take time.
As always, the devil is in the details. We will not really get a sense of the tasks ahead and their prioritization within the Department of National Defence until the four Chief of Defence Staff action teams report. This report is due towards the end of June, but the full dimensions of what lies ahead for these four action teams will not become very clear until the late fall.
This will be especially true of the crucial force development report that will set out future capital acquisition plans. Once these action reports are in, then it will be largely up to committees such as this, and other interested Canadians and groups to press the government of the day to deliver on a very good plan.
Our Canadian Forces deserve much better treatment by our elected governments than they have been getting up to now.
The Chairman: Thank you, professor.
Vice-Admiral (Ret'd) Jim King, Vice-President, Atlantic, CFN Consultants: No, thank you, senator, I do not have any comments, but I am open to any questions you may have for me to answer.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much to the three of you for appearing before us today.
Admiral King, are we as Canadians assuming our full responsibility within NATO or should we be doing more?
Mr. King: I guess we will have to see. Certainly with this paper, it does promise to participate in the NATO Response Force in all three elements, and I think we will certainly have to see what exactly we pledge to that force.
In general, there was a great expectation that a nation that is the eighth largest economy in the world, would end up contributing far more in terms of its GDP than it does. Canada is the fifth or sixth largest financial and operational contributor to the alliance and has been a leader in the alliance in many ways since its very beginning.
When one looks at the Canadian contributions to the alliance, particularly on significant operations, the reality is that Canadians are arguably the best-trained troops and superbly equipped soldiers, sailors and airmen, in all of these fields of operations, and they perform extremely well.
Canada gets virtually nothing out of NATO infrastructure funds to which we contribute, so one always has to balance off these two realities.
When I was there, we made an effort to try to bring this to the fore and bring up other statistics that showed that person for person, we were contributing an awful lot to the fight.
NATO started out as a military alliance built on a political structure and is now much more a political alliance built on a military structure. Political influence is extremely important, and because we are neither Europeans nor American, we are perceived as not contributing to the same extent that others contribute and not to the extent that we are expected. Some of this, of course, is a fallout of the fact that at the end of World War II, when we initially installed ourselves in Europe we were there in spades. At one time we had 12 fighter squadrons stationed in Europe, for example.
Part of it is just the fact that we have not maintained a level of capability; we have not maintained a level of commitment and a level of consistency that would give our allies the feeling that we really were interested and committed to this alliance. I think that more than anything else that is the problem.
Although there is not much mention of NATO in the paper, I like what it says. I like the defence commitment in terms of the NATO Response Force, but until our prime minister, our foreign minister, defence minister, and ambassador make it very clear that we are committed to the alliance in word and deed we will be losing. We will not be getting our money's worth in terms of the influence that we really should get out of participation in that alliance, and which I think is extremely important.
Professor Stairs mentioned multilateralism. I believe multilateralism is a key to our future. It is not just wrapped up in globalization, but in every field of endeavour in terms of interest and values. They hinge on our ability to deal with other people in the world from a security point of view, an economic point of view, and certainly a political point of view, and therefore we cannot squander the fact that we are a member in this extremely important alliance.
Senator Cordy: Certainly when we go to NATO meetings, it is a challenge to get the European countries to recognize that there is more than one country on the other side of the Atlantic, and Senator Nolin and I have had that discussion many times at our assembly meetings.
Senator Nolin: We had a little trick. We would add the word ``North'' to the word ``America.''
Senator Cordy: Yes, that is right. You are absolutely right, when we speak to people and when we have travelled, the opinion of the NATO Forces from Canada, wherever they are, is so high.
One of the things that we had a great discussion about when we were in Afghanistan with NATO was caveats. When we discussed caveats with the military people from the other NATO countries, they said that it is so wonderful to work with Canadians because the Canadians who go to NATO are there to do the work. Other countries may send people in body, but when they actually have to do the work, they will say, ``Well, I cannot do this. I cannot go out in the field.''
Senator Nolin: ``It is against the law.''
Senator Cordy: Getting back to our neighbour, Professor Stairs raised some interesting points. I thought, well where is he going with this?
Geographically, it is pretty tough and it really does put us on the target. When I think about how close we are to the United States, we cannot pick ourselves up physically and move, and we certainly are friends and we have many ties with the Americans.
Is the money we have spent on security since 9/11 working, or is it for show to make people in Canada feel more secure?
Mr. Stairs: Senator, you must remember that I do not actually work in a security establishment. I do not know what it feels like day-to-day on the ground, but my impression is that at the professional or bureaucratic level, we are not doing too badly, which is not to say that there is not a lot more to do.
My sense is that the Americans think we were very quick off the mark, that we were better organized than they were in response to 9/11 and we are probably still much better organized than they are, even with their new Department of Homeland Security, which, as I understand it, is a bit of a bureaucratic jungle.
They were impressed by some of the practical ideas that our bureaucracy was able to produce in dealing with the border question. They had proposals in the hopper in any event because they were looking to have a seamless border from the commercial point of view prior to 9/11. They had some things on the shelf that they could take advantage of very quickly.
The Canadian Institute of International Affairs had its National Foreign Policy conference here in Halifax just a few weeks ago. An American observer who was very much involved at the White House level for a time in the Homeland Security Initiative indicated that dealing with the Canadians was a refreshing experience, even while dealing with the border issue. Canadians have ideas, we get on with the job, and we do the job very effectively. It was a pleasure to work with Canadians. At the bureaucratic level, I think we have probably been doing very well or as well, as can be expected.
I will make the controversial point that even with all of the money that is spent in the hope that it will prevent something unpleasant from happening; the reality is that any seriously motivated terrorist will break through. We had a better chance of stopping Soviet bombers in the 1950s than we have of stopping terrorists today. If you make that point to people in the trade, they will quickly agree with you, but then they say, ``You cannot make that a basis for government policy.'' There is a sense that they simply have to spend the money.
My own view is that actually we are spending it more to impress the Americans than to impress Canadians, because I am not sure that Canadians feel, rightly or wrongly, particularly concerned about threats to Canadian targets. I do not think it elicits a positive response or even much attention from the Canadian public, except when controversial issues having to do with immigration management and things like that come up. I think the government's real concern is to reassure Americans far more than reassuring Canadians.
Now, if something unpleasant happens they will want to be in the position to say after the fact that, ``We did our best,'' and be able to list a series of measures. I do not have the sense that Canadians are much concerned about these issues.
Senator Cordy: Do Canadians think that the Americans are taking care of us?
Mr. Stairs: People often say that, but there is obviously a sense that Canada's general security, particularly on the traditional defence side, can be a modest contribution, because we know that what we do will not make the real difference.
I am not sure that the public thinks about it in those terms. If Canadians did think in those terms, then I am not sure that the reaction to the BMD proposal would have taken the particular form that it did. That is an example of a Canadian response to an issue which seems to be based entirely and symbolically in cosmetic politics, and has nothing to do with real interests or even with how people's ordinary lives would be affected or simply not be affected at all.
Senator Cordy: That is a good point.
Professor Middlemiss I gather your feeling is that most of our resources will go for overseas deployments.
Are we doing enough for our domestic military?
You also said that we have to be more selective in sending our resources overseas. I wonder if you would expand on that statement.
Mr. Middlemiss: I think we are doing a great deal in a binational, bilateral context with the United States; we just finished the top-off 3 series of exercises that involve all levels of governments.
It is not primarily a military task, but I think on the maritime surveillance and security aspects, a lot of planning has gone quite far forward. In the bi-national planning group, there is a lot of discussion about the maritime equivalent to NORAD. That is going to be a hot-button issue for Canadians because they see that as the end run around BMD.
We cooperate in the intelligence-sharing role and our coastal navy and air force enhance Canadian security in those areas. We can hold our heads up with anyone in the quality of that surveillance and actionable intelligence.
To respond to your other question I do believe that we must be more selective in the placement of our troop, especially overseas.
We say that we will never out send burned-out forces again yet, we did just that when we sent people off to Haiti. New governments have the tendency to send out forces that are not fully prepared and rested.
I think it makes sense to send coherent, meaningful military units overseas. I think that the rest of the Armed Forces are catching up with the navy's way of tiered readiness to get off the mark within 10 days or less. The navy is notable for its sustainment criteria so that we can keep things going. Of course, we burned out land as well as naval forces doing that in the past.
Once we have the immediate reaction group, the special operations groups, and the two to three possible mission- specific task forces that they are talking about, between 1,000 to1,200 troops of all types will be what we have to offer. We could sustain those troops indefinitely perhaps if we properly follow them up, but we cannot just go willy-nilly.
Canada is a notorious joiner. We are an alliance junkie and we tend to do every operation. I think we have become more selective. We are going to have to maintain our discipline and this paper says just that. We have to meet these pre-deployment criteria. We have had them before and we have not honoured them.
I think it is sensible to go where we can make a difference. It is a good approach and one that Canadians will understand. We have to recognize that we cannot just keep people abroad for years on end.
One of the aftermaths of our NATO commitment to Bosnia is that we have military staff at headquarters that need to be back home and working in other important areas. I think we have to acknowledge the cost of the loss of those overseas bases, and the long-term costs involved as well. We cannot use them to forward-deploy or to sustain operations in theatre, which we could have done under this new design.
Senator Cordy: What are the drivers behind the development of Canadian defence policy concerning the United States?
Mr. Middlemiss: I think it is a combination of politics and money, and the same talk of transformation.
From an operational standpoint for the Armed Forces, that is part of being interoperable, because it is no sense saying we can do these sorts of things independently if we cannot operate with other people in a sensible way. Our navy and the rest of our Armed Forces is getting up to the standard of being first rate, in keeping up with the United States in particular, and through that process, allowing other less capable nations to plug into our system so that they can talk and communicate with the Americans. Most of us recognize that the A-Team is still the United States, and to make a difference that is where we have to go.
I think we have a slight hint of a more independent capacity outlined in this white paper, but we cannot think that we can sustain ourselves for the long haul.
Senator Forrestall: Gentlemen, it is always a pleasure to hear your comments and observations, particularly in light of the statements that are now in front of us from the government.
You have alluded to who are we trying to satisfy. I am not sure that we know that, but have those who have obviously thought long about it put it in a context that is understandable, sellable, rejectable or acceptable?
Mr. Middlemiss: I could just start on that and then I will leave it to my colleagues.
I should have mentioned that one of the drivers is the Canadian people. Poll after poll has shown that Canadians want to be actively involved in the world. Sometimes it isairy-fairy stuff, but mostly it is good hearted. We want to do things to help people around the world. That is a bottomless pit when you see similar committees looking at foreign policy issues. They are pleading with people to say, ``Narrow it down to your first 150 recommendations,'' because Canadians have this expansive view. I think it is partly because governments have fed them a bit of a line about our self-image and importance in the world, which is not quite warranted by our actual business. Canadians expect something and I think this is good response to that expectation.
Secondly, our allies expect something. I think certainly, as Professor Stairs has pointed out, we are in this to show our allies that we can carry our weight, but above all, in the context of defence of Canada, we can expect nobody else to do this for us.
If a sovereign state, cannot take care of its own backyard, and I think this defence statement goes a long way to rectifying that deficiency, then what business do we have claiming that we are a sovereign, independent state.
I think this is sellable, good and coherent. It sets out clear guidelines, as well as benchmarks against which to judge the forces. We will have to wait and see the recommendations of the action teams. They are dealing with important fundamental issues such as commanding control, force generation, force development, and institutional reform.
If you want to see real snakes, wait until the bureaucracies get involved in these issues.
Mr. Stairs: I agree with Mr. Middlemiss.
I will reiterate the distinction between the North American environment and the overseas environment. It seems to me that the North American requirements are to a very large extent, driven by American requirements.
We obviously have our own waters and our own air space to patrol to the extent that we can, and if there are other conventional threats related to the civil power requirements or so on, we need to meet those requirements as a sovereign power.
My concern is much less for the danger of a direct attack on Canada and much more with the American response to what they perceive to be an attack on them. The underlying requirement, from my point of view, is to satisfy them that we are making a reasonable contribution to our collective and joint security. I see that as essential to our relations with the Americans.
If you imagine a case in which there was an attack on the United States by someone who had a temporary or permanent residency in Canada, the consequences in terms of American behaviour at the border would be, in my view, potentially catastrophic. We need to be able to say to them that we have done everything that is reasonable for us to do on that particular front.
Now more than even during the Cold War when we go overseas we should do it in a voluntary kind of enterprise. I am not trying to suggest there are not utilities for Canada; there are, and they have to do with our diplomacy in NATO, and in the United Nations, and with our credibility in many other environments.
We are now in a situation in which the driver is to some extent, the view of the Canadian public, that this is the kind of contribution that Canada should make to the world, because, after all, we do have the capacity to do it, and so we should. We are unlike Israel for instance; we are not threatened by imperatives of another kind.
In my view, if you want to know the defence policy then follow the budget and see how much money there is to spend on defence.
I can imagine a trade-off discussion at the cabinet level in which people would say, ``Well, if I spend the money on these matters, there will be an electoral or other kind of political reward. If I spend it on defence, as long as there is no opportunity cost, I will get away with it.''
If people could think for one minute that there has been an opportunity cost in other areas of public policy they care about, then it is downgraded, and I think frankly that that has been happening now for quite a long time.
It has been reversed a little in the last couple of years largely because of reports from committees like yours and reports from CDFAI and from commentaries by academics. The press finally realized two or three years ago that we have a problem. Canadians are bothered enough so that we are getting a political response now that there is a surplus amount of money to spend on our Armed Forces.
Even so, frankly, I think that is quite shallow. In other words, if there were a need for public expenditures that were more politically sanctioned, then I think this would be sacrificed again, which is why I said earlier that, ``I will believe it when I see it.'' It is not just a matter who is in power. I do not think that is the issue. The issue is, what other demands on the public treasure will there be that are politically more attractive from the point of view of people who make those decisions.
While I agree that to some extent these overseas operations are driven by the Canadian desire to make a positive contribution, but when it comes to a decision between defence spending and health spending, defence looses just like that. I am sceptical just how deep our concern is for the defence of our country.
I think that when the Americans really care, we act. The government does not ask anybody, it just acts as it sees fit because the government knows that the Americans do not need us.
Senator Forrestall: I want Admiral King to extend these observations to Asia.
Our principal military advisor has suggested that there are policy statements that could go in one, two, or three directions. I agree that the CDS will have an extraordinary influence on how the defence dollar is spent far more than many of his predecessors in recent years.
Is there something Canada can do with respect to Asia? Does Canada have a role in the East? Is there a need for an informal military alliance in that part of the world that might join eventually with the North Atlantic nations, join the two hemispheres and sneak into Asia that way, across of the broad Pacific.
Canada does not have, I do not think, very clear nationally defined policies with respect to Asia because of our ties to Britain. The United States still has a Canada-Europe desk, but this is 2005.
The United States is going to keep us in Britain for as long as it is convenient for them to do so, and I think it gives them an extraordinary capacity to keep us at arms length.
How can we expand our international image? Can we give assistance somewhere in the East?
Mr. King: I do not totally agree with Professor Stairs about relegating the multilateral aspect of our relations with NATO countries, Western Europe, even say, Eastern Europe, to something that is not essential.
Soon we will see the U.S. Defence Security Policy come out, and I think you will see that it does away with this idea that there is a quote: ``Away game and a home game,'' when one talks about domestic security. The United States has recognized that when your personal domestic security is down to examining containers on your waterfront, you have lost the war.
As someone mentioned earlier there is a huge challenge in defeating the terrorists, and frankly, 80 per cent is not good enough. The U.S. certainly, who arguably is faced with a larger problem than anyone, have concluded that one has to look at the world, and I think we have concluded the same thing. I think it is familiar territory to us.
I would just remind people that we were prominent in Korea. If one visits Korea today, one of the first things Koreans will ask you as you discuss issues is, ``Are you going to be there again?'' Not so much these days, there is not the worry about the North, but when there was, certainly that was a real question, and there was the expectation that the answer would be, ``Yes,'' something that I think most Canadians, whether in government or not, have never even contemplated since the 1950s.
I think there is a place for us in Asia. If one looks at our population on the West Coast and the population in this country in general, many Canadians who hail from that part of the world believe that we have trading interests in that part of the world. That portion of the population is very interested in what goes on over there and indeed, Foreign Affairs Canada has done a very credible job in keeping us engaged with many of those countries, not just through their embassies, but also through CIDA and other programs. Our Military Training Assistance Program is in Uzbekistan and several other central Asian republics.
I think it is all the same thing. I think that when one focuses the Canadian Forces on domestic operations, and I totally agree with Professor Stairs about the primacy of the North American focus, I think that is because it has to be right, and it is defence of the homeland. The forces now have a prominent role in the defence of our homeland.
The statement, however, does discuss the three-block war, and that is the reality of operations for all three branches in the Canadian Forces, both here in Canada and on the international scene.
I believe the problem is that the decision makers of this country do not think strategically concerning policy and spending.
Either Professor Stairs or Professor Middlemiss mentioned that politics does not figure in everything. It has a place, but security is something that tends to transcend the normal political issues and we need to start thinking in long-term strategies about where our real interests lie in this world. Once we define our interests, the decision becomes a great deal easier.
Right now, we tend to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis, and generally, for totally domestic and political reasons, our allies see this clearly, and rarely see a Canadian leader of any stripe stand up and speak in any sort of altruistic sense about our commitment to the rest of the world.
When we do hear that kind of talk, it tends to be, to quote my colleague to the right, ``mere puffery,'' and it does not impress anyone. We need to get to a point where we hear other world leaders who seem to be quite able to stand up and talk about critical concepts such as economics, globalization, politics, and security.
Until our leaders do the same thing and start applying it to the development of our own policy, I worry that our policy statement, which we generally support, will just be words and not reality.
Mr. Middlemiss: I think this is a very good point. If I had to say — and I am not blaming the crafters of this document — that there is one blind spot from an operational standpoint, it is with respect to the Asia-Pacific and the rise of the Chinese dragon.
Ten to 15 years is a long time in politics and world events, and we make plans based on what we have recently done in places like Afghanistan, Haiti and the failing and failed states. We must understand that there is something coming from the East and it may be warmer than what is behind you, senator, and I think we have to address that reality.
I agree with my colleague that we need to address the issue politically. This document does not give us a clear enunciation of what our interest would be in that respect. That is why I said one of the unanswered questions is where our bases will be located. I think the answer is the East Coast, because that is where we will be closest to the failed and failing states. You would not call China a failed state, not to their face anyway. I am a little concerned that we may not have the responsiveness operationally on the West Coast.
In addition, numbers matter. Joint support ships, one great honking ship, whatever it is, it had better be on the right coast or we are going to be a long time before we can respond to the other one. That is Canada's geographic reality.
Senator Forrestall: I recall asking the late Dr. Bill Dalton what in the hell would we do if 5 million Asians decided they wanted to get on 150 boats and come to Canada? What would we do with them, would we shoot them? No. Would we welcome them; yes but very sceptically. How the hell could we house them, feed them, clothe them? We would have to put them in the army, would we not? Oh, I do not know.
Senator Munson: I was in China for five years as a reporter, from 1987-92. I went back last year for the first time in 13 years and I know, first hand, that we had better pay attention.
It seems that the new defence policy intends to focus onland-centric operations, both at home and abroad.
Does the new defence policy strike the right balance amongst the navy, army, air force, and of course, the new special operations group?
Mr. Middlemiss: I think that is going to be resolved some time later this fall. The early indications from academic and military colleagues are pessimistic about the future of some aspects of the air force.
The air force is more than just CF-18s and fighters, but clearly, their days are numbered. I do not think we will get AMRAAM, advanced medium range, air-to-air missiles. You do not need them for airliners over Toronto or things like that.
They are talking more about air-to-ground roles with asix-pack of fighters. In my view, let us send a full twenty-four case. It is probably better from the advertising point of view if we send Molson Canadian rather than a six-pack of fighters. I think there are tough times ahead.
Strategic airlift has not been resolved. The planners are concerned with assured lift, both sea and air. Some of that will be urgently required for the rapid response, and I think the joint support shifts, et cetera, will address that issue.
I do not agree that it is all land centric. There is a lot of talk about these being sea-based. The initial response will be move to sea, in order to respond when and if the government decides to make a decision. You can shift a navy-based task group containing medium-lift helicopters, army units, et cetera, and of course, naval protective as well as transport, in and out of a region depending on whether the government decides to make a decision. You will not have to wait three weeks, three months, for a Tsunami response or how many weeks it took us to get just out of Haiti. We could have sent the navy off there right away.
I see the future as good for the navy and the air force, and I think some of my navy colleagues here will be pleasantly surprised that there are things very positively mentioned about the navy, less so for the air force.
The big question mark for the navy is the replacement of that command and control capacity. The first action team is dealing with that replacement but it is a long way down the road.
It is a vital requirement and our past political influence that we have derived from that command and control capacity, is something that we cannot just migrate over to less capable frigates. That will be something I will be watching for in the fall.
Senator Munson: On the issue of inter-operability in Canada, can we keep up with the sophistication of the British and the Americans?
I ask that in the context that somebody suggested there might be an advantage to having the Canadian Forces become a sovereign extension of the U.S., with the same equipment tactics and techniques.
Mr. King: Well, I believe it is the right balance. I think it does need to be land centric, but I think that is part of the balance today.
You need to get to wherever you are going, and that may be to your own country. You need to put soldiers on the ground. The other two services that have a whole host of separate roles need to be key participants, and I think that the chief has very neatly defined a joint approach to achieving that goal.
I also think that it is true of the army more than the other two services. The army needs to do much more in terms of being ready to do that kind of thing. It needs the extra focus so that we do not have the embarrassment of another Afghanistan, where we did a wonderful job and then had to leave after six months because we could not sustain the operation.
Interoperability is just the sine qua non of multilateral operations. You have to have it. If you are not a significant contributor to an operation, you will become a major liability. There is a basic safety issue there in all three services. We really do not have a choice in the matter.
If you are going to get the full effect out of the cost of your forces, and the effort and the danger you are putting them in, then they need to be as effective as possible, and that means following some of the fundamental leads of countries like the United States.
We have an extremely close relationship with the United States in lots of aspects that other nations simply do not share, including the British, and I think that relationship is a bit of a force multiplier for Canada. We need to build on our relationship with the Americans. In no way do I see that as a loss of sovereignty. Indeed, as far as the United States and key allies are concerned, it gives us a terrific amount of influence, not just in operations and in the leadership that we can bring to them, but also in all sorts of peripheral activities like the development of NATO, or allied doctrine, communication standards and software. Canada has a lot to offer from a technical point of view, and indeed from a military technical point of view.
Spending the effort to make sure we are interoperable, particularly with the United States, results in many dividends and contributes to our sovereignty.
Senator Munson: Professor Stairs, you referred to Canada as a ``status quo power,'' and remarked that Canada's security policies overseas are not imperatives, but elective or voluntary.
Could you expand on that for me a bit, because are we not a trading nation, dependant upon global security? Do we not need to be engaged overseas?
Mr. Stairs: Canadians talk a lot about being a peace loving people who want a secure environment, as if this were somehow rooted in a superior set of values. I get very nervous when I hear Canadians think of this as a superior virtue. Canada is essentially status quo power.
Countries break the peace because they have interests that they perceive to be more important to them than peace itself, and that happens when certain conditions break out for particular countries. We nearly did it over flat fish, over the turbot war. We mobilized grey hulls on the horizon, arguably with some uncertainty about our legal position, to defend flat fish outside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Canadians got quite riled up about this. We were very excited and chauvinistic for a good week.
I am suggesting that if you change the circumstances, if you configure the circumstances, even peace loving Canadians will not play the game, as if all they cared about was order. I quite often hear people talking as if they thought this was some superior feature of the Canadian culture, and I am inclined to think that it has more to do with our circumstances than with these other factors.
I am not trying to suggest that we should not engage in multilateralism or that we should not engage abroad, but it seems to be transparently clear, in the wake of 9/11, that virtually every department of government in Ottawa down- tools to focus on one issue.
When 37 kilometres of 18-wheelers were backed-up at the Ambassador Bridge, everybody had to act on it quickly. That is what I mean by an imperative. Israel has the same kind of imperative surrounded by people who want to throw them into the sea. That does not mean to say that our foreign policy interests are not served by our engaging overseas in the way you suggest. Of course they are. It is just that it is not the same order of business as this order of business, in my view.
When you talk about the international community, the difficulty is that of course, we can only make a relatively small contribution in most of these contexts. To know how much is enough has always been a problem even at the height of the Cold War. In a sense, the best answer you could get was an answer that pleased the people with whom you were working. You had negotiations and you came up with an answer that was a trade-off between what you could do reasonably and what was useful to the cause. In that sense, it is always marginal, and very rarely a decisive player. If you are looking at it from the point of view of making public policy, it seems to me it does not often give you concrete guidance.
We know that we want to continue to do these roles, albeit more selectively overseas and that leads to certain requirements including airlift capacity and sealift capacity and a certain kind of configuration of the Armed Forces, and certainly more boots on the ground. They need to rectify an imbalance because of the difficulty the army has been facing and so forth.
Senator Munson: Can we realistically play an influential role on the ground in Africa? We have heard this talk once again about this elite group of soldiers.
Mr. Stairs: Well, this will be a bit of a broadside at Ottawa, but in many of these situations, the problem is far more complex, and the kind of effort that you have to make could really make a difference. It is far, far greater than people who make the decisions here and in other countries too, in the United States alone, are willing to accept. In other words, I think the policy analysis is quite sloppy, and as a result end up with a situation like Darfur. We too often wind up making a token contribution that is not embedded in a very systematic plan. We need to know the requirements, how long we will be engaged and at what level of assistance in coalition, with what other partners, specializing in what kinds of activities relatively to what they specialize in, and so on.
These kinds of enterprises are often social engineering enterprises of enormous complexity. My criticism is that these decisions are not made after careful policy analysis. I just think we kind of often leap and go in, and sometimes we have done terrible damage in the process. The first round in Haiti, in my view, would be an excellent example of that damage.
I think we can make a difference, and in some areas, AIDS perhaps, we can make a fundamental difference, but I think we have to think it through very carefully.
Mr. Middlemiss: I agree completely and my caveat is, it is fine politically and it is certainly from the military standpoint there is nothing wrong with trying to be more credible, get more credit for what we actually do, than we have in the past.
As politicians, you must watch that we do not go from the good and commendable, trying to make a difference where we should, to simply being different. The temptation might be to send one of the new units off and expect it to fight its way in and do all the three-block wars, but they are not designed to do that sort of thing and we must understand that they are a part of a coalition outfit.
True, in Canada, we can do some things with them that we could not do before. Sometimes making a difference gets switched into just trying to be different for the sake of being different. Like my colleague, I oppose that heartily.
Senator Nolin: I want to stay on this topic of the international role of Canada and talk a little bit more about NATO.
To give you a little bit of background of the various questions I want to ask you, 10 days ago we were in New York and then in Norfolk. In New York, we discovered that the EU and the Under Secretary General, looking after peacekeeping missions, are looking at a possibility of using the EU as a rapid response for the United Nations. That is one element of the environment of my questions.
More and more, NATO is involved outside of its zone and we are always there. Like you said, admiral, in some cases we are making an interesting difference in how we perform our duties.
Professor Stairs, where do the Americans want to lead NATO, and what role must Canada play in that organization?
Mr. Stairs: I really would not want to advertise myself as a specialist on what the Americans want to do.
Senator Nolin: I do not want to ask the same question to all of you, so I have segmented it. I was reading your bio, andU.S.-Canada relations are part of it, so that is why I have asked you the question.
Mr. Stairs: I think in general terms what the Americans would like to get from the Europeans is more assistance than they have been getting in the past in theatres in which the Americans feel they have an interest. In other words, they want more help and I think they feel quite strongly, that they have been carrying the lion's share of the burden of securing not only themselves, but also the civilized world to some extent against the new challenges and they think the Europeans have often let them down. I am sure they are interested in mobilizing European assistance in various ways, although my own view is that they have handled that diplomacy very, very badly.
Senator Nolin: Why do they want to push NATO? Definitely they do not want to stop in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They must have an idea as to where they want to go.
Mr. Stairs: To answer would mean getting into too much speculation.
Senator Nolin: Well, your answers will stay in Canada whatever you say.
Mr. Stairs: Yes, but I feel a little bit uncomfortable with that question. I might have some observations from the Canadian point of view. NATO may very well be able to act in a way that the United Nations cannot. Therefore, it becomes a kind of proxy for the United Nations, and in those circumstances, it is perfectly sensible for Canadians to want to take part.
I think Canadians have to recognize though, that they are not necessarily going to get rewards back from the Europeans in other areas of public and foreign policy interest if they do this. In other words, it seems to me we are contributing more and more to NATO activities, but we are not necessarily getting a return in economic diplomacy or in political diplomacy, nor are we noticed outside the security community as a separate factor in North America. If you talk to business people about the need to develop economic relations with the Europeans, what the Europeans will tell you is that they tend not to think of Canada as separate from the United States in that context.
If the assumption is that we are going to be playing an active role in NATO in the hope of winning credit that will pay off in other areas of our relations with Europe, I think the answer to that is, probably not, not very often, at any rate.
I think there are another reasons to involve us heavily in the NATO context, because there is some sign of a breach between the Europeans on the one hand and the Americans on the other that is not in our interest, or in the interest of the world more broadly conceived.
There may be a kind of diplomatic role, if quietly and tactfully and diplomatically played, for Canada, and preserving some of the glue of the old notion of a North Atlantic area, and I do not think we get to play in that game.
I am not enormously optimistic, but we are an obvious player to do that, and if the government started talking role and honest broker and all that stuff, I would get very upset. There may be room for making constructive contribution in that way and we cannot do that if we do not contribute. You are not at the table if you do not put some assets on that table.
Senator Nolin: Professor Middlemiss, how do you see the expansion of NATO, and where should it stop? We will be meeting with our ambassador in Brussels to discuss this matter.
Mr. Middlemiss: Canada has been actively involved with the Partnership for Peace program and I think we have done our job well. Often, these jobs, from the military standpoint, are important but unrecognized. We have helped in basic areas such as assistance in the preparation of a defence budget. The problem that the first tier joiners or expanders found was that once the democratic genie is out of the hat you cannot deliver on the criteria for democratization, size of armed forces and so on. There was some pressure from these wannabe NATO countries in that regard. You had better get us now because we cannot deliver down the road.
We must consider the Russian sensibilities, which are not trivial because they are feeling themselves to be somewhat surrounded by the new, enlarged NATO.
I think it is a terrible shame, that there has not been an acknowledgement of a continuing Canadian contribution to NATO through the Airborne Warning Control System. I was there a number of years ago and it was almost pathetic to see the commandant at the time pleading for some sort of recognition. Those folks have been involved, almost continuously, in a war now for almost a decade in the Serbia, Bosnia region, going to war, being shot at, and so on, leading that formation, and they get virtually no recognition by anybody except NATO, surprisingly, but certainly not by the Canadian people. They are almost unrecognized, and I just leave that as an area in which I would like to see something done. They are facing many morale problems over there from that standpoint.
I do not have a view, senator, on how to solve NATO's problem. Once you have t an organization that is vying in size to be another United Nations, you get the same problems associated with being a united nation. Too many fingers are in thedecision-making pie, and NATO operates by consensus. I would leave it that way.
Senator Nolin: That leads me to you, admiral. You have been involved in making that huge organization work.
Let us tackle first that question of consensus. We are one of the 26 members of NATO. It is already tough at 26, plus 1, of course, because when it comes to a major decision, of course, they are not around the table, but they pretend that they have a veto, and guess what, I think they have it. Therefore, it is 26 plus 1.
I think one good thing is that the strategic operation is only in one place, in Brussels. If NATO expands, how will it be able to function effectively?
Mr. King: I really have to take issue with my colleagues on this matter. We need to ask where the United States wants to take the alliance.
I think we forget that President Clinton started the Partnership for Peace program and that NATO is 46 nations, 26 of which are now full members of the alliance.
Senator Nolin: The 46 are not around the table.
Mr. King: Well, in fact, they are around. We have two tables where we do get them together. At the end of the Cold War, NATO filled the security vacuum in the Central and Eastern European nations. It did not take those nations very long to realize that their political and economic future was with becoming members of the EU, but that their security was with NATO. The alliance extends to Russia; remember that NATO is now really from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
The original OSCE was an alliance of 46 nations that had a place to meet each other, to talk, and to act bilaterally.
We often forget that one of the most important things the alliance provides is a way for nations to act in a bilateral and a multilateral fashion, whether or not they are sitting around the table engaged in having to build or not build consensus. So there is a terrific amount of effort goes on in the alliance just providing those multilateral and bilateral opportunities for countries.
Now, if you look just to the east, we have taken in most of the original Warsaw Pact nations and they are members of the alliance. We had a war in Europe in the Balkans; it is pretty well out, but it could flare up again. Croatia, a member of the Partnership for Peace, Serbia, and Macedonia want to become members of the alliance. Ukraine, which has made a very peaceful transformation of their society very much want to join the alliance. Ukraine is the only nation in the world to give up nuclear weapons, a debt we owe that country forever. It has one of the largest diasporas in the world. We should never forget what the Ukrainians did.
I see an alliance that is alive and well and in which the United States is focusing on bringing Russia, Ukraine, and those central Asian republics closer and closer, following the lead. We are all watching what Turkey has done on the way to becoming very much a Western nation, a nation that will soon join the EU.
The United States is doing that and also making very sure that we get all of those nations very much engaged in the fight to keep weapons of mass destruction away from all of us.
For a number of years, when I was in Brussels, President Putin would come to Brussels, or the Secretary-General would be in Moscow, and he would talk about the threat of terrorism because of Chechnya. We used to sort of laugh at him because we saw Chechnya as largely a Russian problem, but the reality was that, in fact, he was right and now we find ourselves talking a similar language even if we disagree perhaps over some of the meanings.
Getting Russia on board and building on the enlargement of NATO; bringing those central Asian republics onboard; building on the Mediterranean dialog in both North Africa and the Middle East; and the fact that NATO is talking formally to China, are signs of a major institution that will function extremely well.
Professor Middlemiss is right; you get to a point where you get too many people around the table. Consensus usually does not rest with the number around the table, but rests with the agreement among the major players: the United States, France, Germany, and the U.K. If the major players are on board, generally, there is consensus, and everyone follows, not a problem.
I would argue that apart from the physical problem of 26 ambassadors, the enlargement of the alliance to include, Ukraine, Croatia, perhaps Macedonia, maybe Albania, is not likely to threaten the alliance any more than the last alliance has.
The Chairman: To the panel, thank you. It has been a very instructive hour and a half. In fact it seemed to shoot by too quickly. I think we could do another hour and a half and have a second round.
I do thank you, Professor Stairs, Professor Middlemiss, and Admiral King. You have been of great assistance to the committee. We hope we can come back to you. We hope that we can have a continuing dialogue.
We think that it is not only important for our reports to move forward, but we think that sort of dialogue is important in our country.
Thank you for helping us today and we look forward to meeting with you again soon.
The committee adjourned.