Sir Niall Ferguson

And this was a recurrent theme right the way through into the Obama administration.

And it was a theme in Trump 1.

the first series just as it is now and to answer your first question why did this go on for so long the answer is because every president from nixon down to obama did nothing really beyond say please do more they didn't actually apply any pressure to the europeans and the europeans

realized that they had a peace dividend that was being paid annually from the minute the Soviet Union collapsed.

So the defense budgets went down well below 2% of GDP in the majority of NATO countries.

Now, Trump discovered that if you actually get serious and apply pressure and make it seem like you might withdraw from NATO, you got the Europeans' attention.

And I think it's important for us to give Trump and Vance credit where it's due.

In the space of two weeks,

With the most obvious example being Vance's speech at the Munich Security Council.

But yeah, the encounter with Zelensky in the Oval Office was equally important.

In just two weeks, they completely worked the Europeans up in a way that no president has been able to do since the 1960s.

And in that sense, he's making Europe great again.

There's no question about that.

And he's addressing this longstanding American grievance.

The European defense budgets were already going up, were majority above 2%.

But what's really interesting here, Azeem, is that the Germans...

are now seriously going to invest hundreds of billions of euros in defense and infrastructure.

And at the same time, at the European Union level, the Commission is going to launch some multi-billion dollar fund for European-wide rearmament.

So that's a win for Trump, and it's a meaningful win, but it's also a win for Europe.

I did an interview for Die Zeit last week, and I said, you know, you all hate him, but this is actually really good for you.