• 9 hours ago
Transcript
00:00But does all of this not just show once again, I mean, this is something we've talked about
00:03in the past, but I mean, there has been a long period of heavy reliance by the United
00:09Kingdom and Europe on the United States. And I just wonder what you think needs to be done
00:13to rectify this. We've heard the British Prime Minister saying they're going to increase
00:17the percentage of GDP that is allocated for defence. It doesn't sound like a huge increase.
00:24Is he doing enough?
00:26Well, first of all, this isn't just President Trump. Every American president has been saying
00:30this for years. President Obama said it in my time when he came to the NATO summit back
00:35in 2014, when we agreed to spend 2%. So, you know, the Europeans now, I think, have had
00:42sufficient shock from President Trump's arrival and his decision to try and get this war ended,
00:49to realise that the bulk of the burden of security in Europe now has to be borne by
00:57Europeans. So we will see, I hope, not just Britain, but other European countries step
01:02up. A third of the alliance, by the way, still doesn't spend the 2% that was agreed 10 years
01:08ago. So the Americans are right to be aggrieved by that. So that's really the first priority
01:14is all of us in Europe have got to switch spending from some of the welfare spending
01:21that we've got accustomed to over to defence.

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