This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Anatole Levin of the Quincy Institute about after Ukraine.

What does the European security architecture look like? Is there a model? Where is it? Who's going to produce the weaponry necessary to support the architecture?

How else will the money be spent? All of these things are

in the immediate future. Ukraine has galvanized the leadership of what is now EU, what is now NATO.

What's next? Speculating into the 21st century. Great fun. And until leaving, more of this later.

Well, I mean, I certainly think that there is going to be European rearmament. But, you know, they can't do that very quickly because, you know, their bases decayed to such an extent. So this will be a

long-term project. And, you know, the real question is what else will be cut? Because Merz is,

you know, talking about infrastructure, because this has been a huge issue in Germany, the extent to which the railways, you know, the electricity grid, so many things have been allowed to decay.

And if he simply said, we're going to, you know, spend it a huge amount on the military,

I think there will be a major public backlash in Germany.

But the other thing is, you see, that the problem with European defence has only partly ever been about money.

It's also been so much about cooperation and pooling,

you know, industrial production. Well, the problem about that is, of course, that, you know,

if you pool it, some countries will make tanks and others who currently make tanks will not. Some countries will make fighter aircraft, others will not. You know, if Europe chooses to build German

tanks, it won't build French Le Clerks, you know, or British tanks. So, and, you know,

these are appallingly difficult, you know, political issues.

So this cannot be done quickly.

As far as the polls and the nuclear deterrent is concerned, I mean, what I hope is that, you know,

like any limitations on Ukrainian arms, this can become part of a wider process of European arms reduction talks in which we can get back to a new version of the conventional forces in Europe agreement and of the intermediate missiles agreement, both of which, you know, eventually collapsed with fault on both sides.

Because, you know, if so, that would also, you know, be a way without surrendering to Russian demands

of going some way to meet Russian hopes of a new security architecture in Europe,

you know, in which Russia would be fully involved.

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