This is John Bachelor from a conversation with my colleague Colonel Jeff McCausen, United States Army retired CBS News,

about my measure of Europe and its opinion right now about Ukraine war, the United States, NATO, and

the immediate future, including the presidential campaign.

What I learned from speaking with Judy Dempsey of the Carnegie Endowment earlier this week,

she put a survey out to all of her informants across many think tanks, many former government officials.

And there was consistently a concern about what's NATO going to come to if, and then the former President Trump was mentioned, and then the former President Trump was mentioned and then the Congress

is mentioned and then the commitment to Ukraine question what happens next and I ask Jeff is there a sense from his conversations

with his colleagues in Europe and in the United States that the confrontation in Ukraine

is building to something much worse.

And here's Jeff's very careful answer about what we know so far, NATO's largest exercise

since the end of the Cold War, Russia's predation in Ukraine, the overwhelming

of the forces that Avdivka, many captured, many casualties, the murder of Navalny, the election of Vladimir Putin, the re-election of

Vladimir Putin, questions raised about the American political class. Here's Jeff's answer. Much more of this later.

Now there's a growing sense of that. The chief of the defense staff in Great Britain gave a speech in which he said you know the British

people need to be prepared for the pot that possibly in future which caused a

widespread concern that he was actually urging conscription. He backed off from

conscription. There have been similar comments even by leading a German military

officials which is unusual. Someone said I thought it, well, if you had gone to the recent Verkhundi conference in Munich,

which finished last weekend, you know, hand-ringing became a Olympic sport in the halls of Verkhunda as various European officials decried the concerns you described that the threat of war is rising and then understanding I think growing on the part of those officials that they need to prepare themselves

to potentially defend themselves from a more aggressive Russia without perhaps the active support of the United States due to the ongoing intransigence

of Republicans to move forward in any way shape or form to even vote on military assistance to Ukraine.

Thank you.

...