Deborah Cole

I mean, if you're Vladimir Putin and see that the Americans are going wobbly in terms of, you

Then it's, you know, it's an embossed invitation to at least pursue more provocations when we've seen these hybrid attacks, you know, for the last several years.

And, you know, one of the biggest fears is that, you know, the Russians could go beyond Ukraine, you know, potentially into the Baltics, for example.

Or Poland, yeah.

And the Europeans have tried over the last several years since the first term of Trump to build up their military strength, but they're certainly not in a position yet to be able to defend themselves against a nuclear power like Russia with an enormous army.

And so as time goes on,

It's a race against the clock and time is not on the European side.

I don't think anyone thinks that it would be soon enough.

Let's put it that way.

It's really even hard to imagine that the collective effort would be focused enough and enough resources poured into it.

There just isn't enough time to develop that kind of strength while Trump is still in office.

And so I think in the back of many Europeans' minds is, OK, yeah, we got the message.

We're trying.

We're focused.

But of course, there's a hope that after Donald Trump leaves office, that it won't be a MAGA Republican who takes his place.

At the same time, I think that the penny really has dropped under Trump 2 compared to Trump 1, that this post-war period, I think that there is an understanding that that is crumbled.

And the potential, even if whoever replaces Donald Trump is more of a transatlanticist again, there's no guarantee that whoever follows that person won't be, you know, another Trump candidate.

Trump aid, let's put it that way.

Well, it's a revival of an old debate, whether it's better to have increased European military strength within NATO, or the French had talked about building sort of, you know, a parallel structure, having increased military strength outside of NATO.

I think you do have a lot of tension within the European Union as to, you know, which approach is the best.