And then I think most importantly was the commissioning of a new strategic concept for NATO,

which is basically the alliance's guiding document that will set all of its activities really

for the next decade.

Yes, investing in game-changing capabilities in themselves, but they don't exist in a vacuum.

So it's really all about the alliance's ability to bring them together and leverage them across an operating environment.

But it's this question of how does NATO factor in the China challenge?

Welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast.

I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI,

and in this episode, we're going to talk European security and specifically NATO.

President Joe Biden recently made his first international trip,

and it was to Europe.

He attended his first NATO summit as president and that was

a event that was bracketed by meetings with the leaders of the other G7 countries and a bilateral

meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That makes this a great time to kind of step back and

take stock of NATO, look at issues related to European security and talk about the challenges the

alliance really needs to optimize itself for going forward.

To help me do that, I am joined by Lauren Speranza.

She is the Director of Transatlantic Defense and Security at the Center for European Policy

Analysis, which means she was watching the NATO summit closely.

It is a great conversation full of some really interesting

insights from Lauren. Before we get to it, though, just a couple quick notes. First, if you

weren't yet subscribed to the MWI podcast, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. And if

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