Leon Panetta, United States Secretary of Defense, gave the keynote speech at the Halifax Forum 2011. Panetta described the US as confronting "the fiscal realities of limited resources" and outlined the future of the US military "that, while smaller, is agile, flexible, deployable and technologically equipped to confront the threats of the future". Secretary Panetta also urged other countries to share in the burden of maintaining global security. In spite of budget pressures Panetta expressed his confidence in the funding of the multinational Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) program. Together with his US counterpart, Peter MacKay, Canadian Minister of National Defense, confirmed Ottawa's plan to buy 65 F-35 aircraft. Regarding the situation in Syria and Iran, two key issues for the forum, MacKay declared, that the NATO mission in Libya was no blueprint for similar interventions. "There's a danger in creating a scenario that says there is 'world police' that are going to start singling out countries and enforcing what those governments — legitimate or not — should be doing", MacKay told the forum's participants. Any international actions in Syria would need a UN Security Council resolution similar to the one on Libya, the Canadian defence minister added. He also expressed his hope that Russia and China would agree on economic sanctions towards Syria. Speaking in Halifax, Senator John McCain expressed his conviction that the "Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing".