What do you make of it? Do you feel this is m- momentum? This is something different?

First of all, thank you so much for having me on, uh, the podcast.

I think, you know, I-- it, it is a moment in which all of us who are committed to peacebuilding need to kind of coalesce and assert, uh, you know, uh, our agenda.

But I do fear it's at a time when things are looking pretty bad, uh, in terms of not only, uh, levels of violence going up, uh, in terms of the amount of money being made available for, uh, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, conflict resolution, uh, in terms of, as a corollary of that, the prioritization of hard defense, uh, and deterrence, uh, from a European perspective, which I can't help having now, you know, a, an emphasis on certain parts of the world, uh, with the inevitable consequence that other parts of the world get less attention, which I think is a terrible mistake.

So I do think it is a moment, uh, for all of us who feel passionately about this to come together and figure out what the political arguments are, uh, for continuing investment.

And I think there's a dilemma there, because do you try and frame those political arguments in the context of the political prioritization of defense and deterrence? Uh, you know, which is one way of taking it, or do you double down on all the reasons that we know are so essential? If you don't tackle root causes, if you don't tackle, uh, things like climate change and inequality and poor governance, then, you know, the likelihood of conflict, uh, being resolved is reduced.

Uh, but the problem is some of these political arguments are not cutting through.

Michael, I see you nodding.