This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

NATO meeting at the Hague and the Netherlands to discuss, among other things, the future of NATO and the commitment by member states 32 right now to part percentage of their budget that matches every other percentage of budget, everybody pulling the same ore.

However, I learned from Mark Rudy, the new general secretary, that there are questions in being raised routinely

by member states, such as Spain, asking for a waiver in some fashion. So I welcome my colleague

Joseph Sternberg, member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and he writes

political economics column. He's in London because he anticipated all of this contra-temp,

writing a column in these last days about Britain's struggle to reach Mr. Rudy's 3.5% plus 1.5%

eventually for cyber and space.

Joe, a very good evening to you. If I understand correctly,

the challenge for Kirstarmer, who's firmly in control with an overwhelming majority for these

next years, is that it's very difficult to find the money to get to 2%, let alone 3.5, which is the

expectation. Because, and I get lost there, Joe,

why is it that he cannot achieve his ambition to be a member of the club paid up in good

standing? Good evening to you. Hey, John, the short answer is welfare. And so from this perspective,

I think that the UK is actually

a really good case study of the problems that a lot of European countries are going to run into

with these new aggressive, more aggressive defense spending targets that are likely to emerge

from this week's NATO summit.

So, remember, European countries used to spend a lot of money on defense.

I mean, all through the Cold War, they were spending relatively large proportions of their gross

domestic product, especially compared to today on defense.

They had very large, very capable military is working

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