00:00What do you make of that idea that perhaps this is creative destruction, as we saw referenced
00:07in a report from the security conference? Is it maybe needed that we kind of do things
00:14differently, whether they be good or bad, as the commodore there was saying, not the
00:19way we would expect the US to comport itself, but is this creative destruction?
00:24Well, I think Gaza is an unfortunate, you know, example to choose. I don't think it
00:29would have been possible for the Americans to have intervened on the Israeli response
00:35to what was a terrorist outrage of a scale that they themselves had suffered in 9-11.
00:42And they'd have been pretty cross if anybody else had tried to prevent them dealing with
00:479-11. So I don't think that's a particularly good example to choose. I think there are
00:51better examples. The Allies have come alongside America in toughening up the sanctions on Iran,
00:57indeed being a party to the bombing of the nuclear facilities in Iran. That was very important,
01:04sitting alongside American ships in the Strait of Hormuz, helping the Americans police sanctions
01:10on oil tankers. You know, these are current examples of where the Allies have been working
01:16together when you look through the rhetoric. But in terms of your very direct question,
01:23there is certainly an awful lot for the Europeans to be doing. And they've been promising to do it
01:28for a very long time. And you may recall von der Leyen's speech in Munich, where she said,
01:35we've got to get going and replace our dependence on American enablers, the air-to-air refueling,
01:41the missile systems, the heavy lift, and the stuff that we always need the Americans to help us on.
01:46Well, why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we getting European companies to cooperate on that?
01:52We're notoriously bad at that. We're not just underspending. Our forces are, you know,
01:58are undernumbered. They're underpowered at the moment. And they're not, you know, they're not,
02:02they don't claim a rightful place alongside the Americans in the Western Alliance. So we have much
02:09to do as a result.
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