The

The Hello and behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood. In a world loosed from its moorings,

behind the news still offers the reassuring feel of Terra Firma. Two guests, two segments.

Lily Lynch will talk about last week's NATO summit, and Megan Greenwell will catalog the ravages of private equity.

NATO held its annual summit on June 24th and 25th and the Hague. It was an extremely expensive, lockdown and disorganized affair, as we'll hear.

The star of the show was, as is too often the case, Donald Trump,

whose threats to leave the alliance have caused jitters in Europe.

The Europeans often strike an independent pose, but at least for now, always end up kneeling before their American masters.

Or daddy, as NATO Suprimo, Mark Ruta called him, no joke. Trump had demanded that Europe

raised its military budget. He seems unable to comprehend that the designers of the U.S.

Empire invented a masterful structure for world domination, of which NATO has been a crucial part.

He sees the security arrangement,

under which the U.S. provides a defense guarantee in return for vassal-like fealty, as nothing

but exploitative. To Trump, they've been free riders and it's time for them to pay up. So he's insisted

they boost military spending to 5% of GDP. All participants but Spain agreed, though it's unlikely

that all will follow through. Curiously, U.S. military spending is well short of 5%. 3.7% at latest

count. We haven't been at 5% in 13 years. Getting to 5% would require a boost of $400 billion,

or 40% to the Pentagon's budget. You have to wonder if Trump knows that, but let's not tell them. For more in the summit, we're joined by Lily Lynch, who wrote it up on her substack. After many years of living in and writing about the Balkans, Lily has recently moved to Istanbul. You'll hear some seabirds in the background at the beginning of the interview.

I hope they're not too distracting, but I thought it was a nice touch to bring the sounds of the bosporus behind the news. Lily Lynch. That NATO summit, which concluded, what a week ago or so,

sounded extremely expensive and extremely chaotic? You expect more efficiency out of the Dutch.

What was going on?

It's a really good point. My feeling is exact same. It reportedly was the most expensive

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