At the end of today's press gallery lunch that Amber has blogged about, I got to have a quick chat with Liam Fox.
I asked for his thoughts on European countries' response to the Libyan situation. As a committed Atlanticist, who's just got back from talks with Bob Gates, the US Defence Secretary, does Fox believe that Europe's reaction has proved effective?
Well, you can't accuse Fox of not being straight.
His response was that "some countries are doing superbly" and singled out Norway, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Greece, France and Belgium for praise. Unsurprisingly he didn't mention Germany, who have conspicuously failed to get involved with Operation Unified Protector.
But he then brought up the issue of NATO cohesion in a very blunt way: "It’s not a conversation for now, but it is one that will have to happen. There is not military cohesion in NATO and we will have to talk about what that means".
It does not sound like Liam Fox has much confidence in NATO's military capability currently. He wants to lead a conversation on it. Of course, with Gaddafi hanging in there, there is no timescale on when our involvement might end and subsequently when this conversation can happen.
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