This is John Batchel. Colleague John Hardy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

assesses the NATO summit just concluded at the Hague, positively, for the United States and its relationship to NATO,

for the United States and its relationship to Ukraine. Here's John Hardy on the success of the NATO meeting,

including a meeting between

President Trump and President Zelensky about the immediate future in the contest. More of this

tonight. I think the NATO summit was pretty successful overall. That commitment to 5% is really, really important.

And I note that one other thing that falls within that 1.5% of kind of soft defense money is investments in defense industrial base.

That's really important.

And that's also an area where Europe can cooperate and already has begun

cooperating with Ukraine. I think that, you know, President Trump seems to have viewed that the summit

very positively and is very happy with the European kind of step up on defense finance. So that's really a key

outcome.

I think, you know, President Trump had a pretty good meeting with Zelensky.

So I think, you know, right now Trump is pretty convinced that, you know, the Ukrainians are not the impediment to a peace deal.

It is, in fact, the Russians.

So in my view, President Trump has diagnosed that correctly.