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NATO Summit

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for this Statement and for this early opportunity to talk about the NATO summit in the light of the strategic defence and security review. The question I want to ask has been focused by those who have raised issues about Georgia. Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with Giorgi Bokeria, the Deputy Foreign Minister in Georgia. It was, I would say, a combative engagement. He was sharp and intelligent. He was critical of the western nations’ response but he was a realist. The point he was really making was that it was not that he expected us somehow to come and invade Russia with him, but that he expected us to be a little clearer on what we were prepared to do in response. This brings me around to the strategic concept as we now see it. That now has three sections in it, which are about corporate security, crisis intervention and co-operative security. One of the issues in past years has been—we see this in Afghanistan in particular—that crisis intervention and corporate security can stretch the resources of NATO, putting us in a position where it is difficult to know precisely how we move forward. Can the Minister reassure us that the Government are confident that, with the new strategic concept, we can respond effectively in each of those three ways and be clear that we have a response to the sort of questions that the Deputy Foreign Minister was putting to me?