This is the Friends Vista Debating Society.

I am John Batsu with Professor H. J. McHenner International Relations to Brussels.

There's one story all week at Brussels.

NATO expected to raise munitions stockpile targets as war depletes reserves.

Ukraine wants a million shells for the 155 caliber.

NATO says it needs 101 million shells to replenish its stores drained by Ukraine war.

We're looking at a contest between states, 27 of them in NATO, that have not paid the

piper all these decades, counting on the U.S. While the U.S. is no longer able to manufacture

a million shells in a week or a month or several months, the fact is struggling now to put the

reduction lines back into place to replenish its all of its stores in the year 25, in the year 26.

So Professor, Brussels point of view. They say they're going to spend the money,

but right now they need some unanimity about how they're going to respond to Ukraine now,

not future now. What is your measure of their point of view? Have they awakened? Do they realize

that they're behind? Well, I would say that to the extent that they awaken from the stupor that

they've really been in, not an economic, but a political stupor since 1945, that they are coming

alive. And I will say something about that in a second. The reason that we don't have those

shells is the use to be that our army had a very large artillery component, and we had 175

millimeter howitzers. We had 200, whatever millimeter howitzers that you could still see in some

foreign countries, and we had lots of shells. But when we switched to counterinsurgency, the new

new look slim army has actually very little, a very small artillery component compared to what it

traditionally has. So essentially the Ukrainians are in the boat, the Americans and the Europeans,

constructed under false impression of what war was going to be like in the future. But I do see

...