I'm John Batsch who with my colleague Captain Jerry Hendrix, United States Navy retired

Aviator, now at the Sagamore Institute, just returned from the Kiel International Sea Power Symposium.

And this is a conversation that turned on lessons learned from the Black Sea Combat of these last years with the Russian fleet of the now Baltic

Sea potential conflict adding Finland and Sweden to NATO and also the Arctic Sea same story although the Russians are well

ahead we come now to this side of the Atlantic the US Navy and its future

with European powers.

And Jerry, can you generalize about the understanding at the Kiel Symposium?

Well, John, I was asked to come and speak in front of the symposium this year about the topic of what NATO and Europe can expect from the United States.

And I wanted to come in and throw some cold water on the situation.

While I am a strong supporter of the NATO Alliance and also a

strong supporter of Ukraine and its fight to maintain its territorial sovereignty,

as you know there are rising voices in the U.S. body politic that question our continued support for Ukraine

and even our support for the NATO alliance going forward.

And this is really disturbing to me because the

United States has been committed to NATO and its security since Dwight Eisenhower

became president in 1953 you know over just that very issue where he confronted Robert Taft,

Mr isolationism, Mr. Republican, and you kind of stood that down.

So now we're having conversations that go to this sort of isolationist tendency within the United States and I wanted to remind Europe that although there's been some recently some really good news that right now 20 nations of the 32

members of NATO have reached the 2% of GDP spending goal on defense that they set

ten years ago in Wales I chastise the audience for not exactly

celebrating that. The fact that it took 10 years for NATO to get 20

nations is that's dreadfully slow and that in fact and I told him I said

...