And, uh, I think if there's reassurance in those sorts of areas during the Ankara summit, that will put a lot of minds at ease.

Thinking about what Richard and Julie both said, um, I think the US is trying to do two things in Europe right now, uh, that are both important and good.

One, um, is to pressure the Europeans to deploy more conventional capabilities for their own defense.

The other is, um, a kind of calculated reassurance that says to the Europeans, "Even though we're asking you to do more, um, when, when, when the chips are down, you can count on the United States, you can count on Article V." So that's a balancing act, and it's a very old balancing act in US Cold War history.

This administration has a particular approach to it.

But I think it, you know, the problem in the recent past is that progress in NATO and these annual leaders meetings came to be judged by a kind of optical cohesion, um, and, you know, soup to nuts communiques.

And, and I think at, at the, for the juncture in history that we're at, I would rather see the US laser-focused, as I think the administration is, on the core issue, um, which does require a lot of sustained pressure of getting the Europeans up to a Cold War mentality.

[laughs]

Do you think we're at a point where, where the war is at risk of undermining that strategy over the long term? What would, what would success look like at that in a, in a way that would serve consolidation maybe another way?

Well, it's interesting.

If you, if you set back from the current situation and you just, you looked at it objectively and said, "What are we to make of this in, um, purely strategic terms?" Uh, some of that I think is actually a motivation and some of it is, you know, you're, you're imposing logic from the outside.

But, you know, kind of what is the str- what would be the strategic logic? And i- i- one could look at the US move in Iran and say, this is basically offensive sequencing.

This is, um, an opportunity came along to really debilitate the weakest of your three main rivals at a moment when the other two rivals weren't quite ready to confront you and that, you know, uh, there was a logic to it.

Whether you agree or disagree with the logic, I think there's a logic there that says, "Hey, if we can get the Iranians to a point where their, their missile forces and their nuclear capabilities or conventional forces, their proxies are so depleted, um, at, at an economy of force effort from us, right? Then in a future scenario where if the famous simultaneity problem really popped-For us and strategy, and we were dealing with the Chinese in a Taiwan scenario, keeping an eye on the Baltic.

Well, the, the odds of Iran really making big trouble for us have gone down big time because of this kind of bold, uh, play of sequencing.

How, how do you see the state of that effort to build a coalition against Beijing?