This is John Batchel, conversation with colleague Jeff McCausen, Colonel Jeff McCausen, a veteran of the U.S. Army and of NATO.

What to expect on the upcoming NATO meeting. Europe needs to move as one recommends Christian Lagarde and become geopolitically authoritative.

That means defense. That means build your own weapon systems. And Jeff outlines what

must be done and what's talked about before and what's possible. Europe can defend itself.

Does it intend to? Does it spend the money to get it done? Does it think that way?

Unknown. Here's Jeff. More of this later.

It's possible, John, conceptually, certainly something has been talked about before in the days of the Western European Union,

which had a parallel military structure for the European Union members.

But it has to overcome decades, if not centuries,

of politics and history, whereby you can convince the European nations that rather than each

state produce its own tank, its own fighter aircraft, its own artillery piece, that they need

to specialize their efforts to ensure that they get one quality

weapon system that will serve the defense of the entire European Union and beyond, including

the Brits, for example.

I think the Europeans are very worried about the fact that they can no longer depend on

the United States, and then that summit coming up, we could see a massive blowup.

We could see an announcement, frankly, of the United States withdrawing then that summit coming up, we could see a massive blowup. We could see an announcement,

frankly, of the United States withdrawing from NATO or withdrawing substantial amounts of troops from NATO. And Mr. Trump certainly might do that. And the Europeans, I think, are even worried beyond

that that even if they achieve their rather ambitious targets for military capabilities over the next

few years

that may not be sufficient to totally deter Russia from testing the alliance, some kind of