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NATO Summit

My Lords, I am bound to say that NATO is slightly older than the Minister, so it is not really a young organisation. I should like to question the noble Lord further on the national caveat. I welcome the debate on this, but there are some real questions of sovereignty. It is one thing for the British Government to demand that other European Governments abandon their national caveat, but if other European Governments demanded that Britain abandon its national caveats, the Daily Mail and the Sun would have a great deal to say about that—they would be talking about the imposition of a European army. There are some real questions of force doctrine. Disagreements in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo have partly been about how you treat civilians and what you do about collateral damage. Those are real questions about how you fight. Those disagreements are not only among the Europeans but between the Europeans and the United States, as the largest member of NATO. I recall a number of people involved both in Bosnia and Kosovo remarking from the British perspective that some of the most difficult caveats were those that the American forces imposed on themselves about their operations, which were not entirely helpful to their allies there.