OTTAWA — There's nothing bureaucrats like more than a new buzzword that can put a little shine on what might otherwise be an unpopular concept.

So it is with "smart defence," a buzzword cooked up at NATO headquarters in Belgium that's going to be a hot topic when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other NATO leaders gather in Chicago this weekend.

In NATO's eyes, it means doing more without spending more.

It's a concept that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been pushing in recent meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders.

He's got little choice.

Most of Canada's partners in this historic alliance — including the U.S. — are flat broke. The U.K. has mothballed an aircraft carrier. The U.S. is cutting billions in new weapons research. And so on.

At the same time, NATO has no end of new kinds of security threats it may have to deal with.

NATO's smart defence, then, is short-form for carrying on with a lot less money and resources.

Meanwhile, the Americans, who are the single biggest contributor to the alliance, have a new strategic focus on the Pacific where a newly aggressive and wealthy China is flexing its muscles. A few days ago, China sent five warships into a part of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines. At stake is control over trillions of dollars in oil and gas beneath the seabed. China is betting that if there's any legal disputes over that resource, possession — by force, if necessary — will be nine-tenths of the law.

In response, Obama has put marines in northern Australia and is beefing up America's military presence in the region.

So Rasmussen has a distracted American partner and his chief European partners — Germany, France, and Spain — are scrambling to prevent the eurozone from going bankrupt. (Spain itself is teetering on the financial brink.)

Meanwhile, NATO still has a shooting war going on in Afghanistan. And Rasmussen is looking to Canada for more help with that. After all, Canada still pays its bills and we've just spent the last decade proving we have the best small fighting force on the planet.

Rasmussen told Global TV he hopes Canada's 900 or so soldiers will stay in Afghanistan after 2014 to continue training Afghans.

In fact, military sources say Canada is likely to withdraw half of those soldiers by the end of this year.

The Harper government is reluctant to commit to another extension and, as Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the House of Commons Tuesday, no decisions have yet been made on Canada's role in Afghanistan after its announced pullout date of 2014.

The bigger issue for Canada at this weekend's NATO summit is getting the alliance to break out of its Eurocentric mindset.

As retired Canadian colonel George Petrolekas told MPs Tuesday: "It's trying to push NATO to recognize their boundaries don't end in the Bay of Biscay. They end in the Straits of Juan de Fuca." His point: NATO still thinks its boundaries are the western shores of France rather than the western shores of Canada and the U.S.

If NATO members could figure that out, that would indeed be smart defence.