Ben Hall
speaker
96 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 10 Jul
Ben Hall’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Taking Stock · Are weight loss drugs starting to have an economic impact on society? · 10 Jul 2026
podcast
So NATO was set up as an alliance of European and North American powers in the wake of the Second World War to protect Western Europe, essentially, against the Soviet threat and has now expanded to 32 members.
And it's obviously gone through different guises, but is now very much recentering on its core mission, which is to protect Europe.
pretty much the whole of Europe now, against the threat of possible Russian aggression.
It does, because the very essence of NATO was to bind America into guaranteeing European security.
So on a sort of very high geopolitical level,
um if america were to abandon uh nato it would be a fundamental break in the west in transatlantic relationship um but obviously it would also have very very practical effects for the defense of europe because
America is the dominant power, dominant military power within NATO.
It provides the supreme military commander, the supreme allied commander for Europe.
It provides the bulk of the kind of real fighting forces in Europe.
And then a lot of the what they call the supporting backbone, things like intelligence, reconnaissance, heavy lift, transport, air to air refueling, air defenses, all of those kind of things.
So, if America pulls all of those out in an instant, NATO would be gravely, gravely weakened.
But I think the Europeans are beginning to realize they have to find a way of salvaging it with a lot less America and potentially with no America at all, because there is nothing else.
He does have a point, and he was not the first American president to make it.
Obama and Biden before him all made it quite forcefully at times.
And the Europeans have been enjoying the peace dividend since the end of the Cold War for far too long and not spending enough and relying on American firepower and also relying on American leadership.
And they have done so for far too long.
But it's, I think, unfair to say that the Europeans have done nothing.
Many in northern Europe in particular and now Germany at the heart of that and those along the eastern flank of NATO are spending enormous amounts of money on defence.
It's the ones in Western and Southern Europe that are either disinclined to do so or are unable to do so or haven't made the hard choices that would allow them to do so.
And I would include Britain in that, but also France and also Italy.
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