Norway is about to buy new fighters for its Air Force. Well, Norway has been a very valuable member of NATO, as I pointed out in my remarks, they performed admirably during the Kosovo conflict, their F-16s were flying alongside U.S. and other NATO aircraft, carrying the air campaign's mission. They have contributed and are about to contribute forces to the KFOR mission, they are already engaged in Bosnia, they have contributed generously to help the refugees, so I think Norway has measured up to its full responsibilities, and I would expect it would want to continue to do so in the future. Minister Lower responded in Norwegian. Our neighboring countries here, Sweden and Denmark, are in the process of dramatically cutting down the defense forces.
Many countries are in the process of reforming their militaries.
The United States for example, at the end of the Cold War, downsized its military. Each of the countries will have to decide what is in its best interests in terms of making the forces more flexible, lighter, more easily deployable, more capable inflicting lethal harm to the enemy, all of the issues involved in the so-called Defense Capabilities Initiative. I think that there is a point of diminishing returns, no doubt, that if there is a continued reduction in the size of the force, and a continuing reduction in the size of the defense spending, that will lead to a growing gap in capability between the United States and other NATO members, and that's something we should strive to avoid. It's an issue that I have raised as well as others, in the NATO meetings, and its something we have to keep a very vigilant eye on, to make sure that there is a sufficient commitment to responsible defense spending, in view of the fact that we have these commitments and are likely to have need for these kinds of forces in the future. One of the ministers mentioned the idea that there could be other national collapses that NATO would have to respond to.