Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with an assessment of Trump's foreign policy wrecking crews' attack on our closest

allies at the Security Conference in Munich, where Fox TV amateur Hegset gave away any leverage

Ukraine has to Putin, followed by Vance, who told the alliance leaders that Russia,

which invaded its neighbor and is destroying Ukraine while murdering its people, is not the enemy.

Vance claimed the enemy is within, and Europe's enemy is wokeness.

Joining us from Munich, Germany, is Charles Cupschen, who was director for European Affairs

on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

He's now a professor of international affairs in Georgetown University School of Foreign

Service and spent the last three years of the Obama administration as special assistant

to President Obama for national security.

He's the author of Power and Transition, the Peaceful Change of International Order,

and How Ennis Become Friends, The Sources of Stable Peace.

And his latest book is Isolationism,

A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.

Then we'll examine how Trump and the Republicans are following Hungary's dictator, Orban's playbook, via their joint creation project 2025 to the letter, and speak

with Kim Lane Shepley, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University.

She lived in Budapest,

doing research for the Constitutional Court of Hungary, teaching at both the University of Budapest

and at Central European University, and she studied the emergence of constitutional law in Hungary and

Russia, living in both places for extended periods. The author of 9-11, The Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law,

...