Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast.

I'm Sarah Isger joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg and David French.

We're going to start with the latest updates coming out of Ukraine and Russia and President

Biden.

But then we want to talk about the issues maybe not getting as much attention, heading

into the midterms, crime, immigration, other things that may be top of voters' minds,

even if they're not top of mind in Washington.

Let's dive right in.

Steve, I want to get into the weeds, I think, a little bit more on what's happening in

Ukraine, what's causing some of these issues in a larger sense, not in a 20-22 sense.

NATO's open door policy, the idea that any country in Europe with unanimous consent can

kind of just join NATO.

And this is one of Vladimir Putin's main objections.

He wants that policy to end.

Set aside Vladimir Putin's desires for a second, though we're all very interested in them

now, I suppose.

But is the open door policy that is causing all this kerfuffle actually and separately

a good policy for the United States to be defending?

And I just want to read you a couple statistics, I don't know what the right facts.

Since 1997, NATO has nearly doubled in size, only one-third of the alliance members fulfilled

their spending obligations in 2021.

And the most recent inductees, Montenegro in 2017, North Macedonia in 2020, have a collective

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