Hi everyone and welcome. My name is Glenn Dyson and I'm joined today by Alexander McCurice and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Welcome.

Good to be with you. Great to be with you and a great pleasure to be talking to Colonel Wilkerson again.

Yes, really great to see you. I wanted to ask, I thought we could start off by looking at some of the conflicts or problems we have now in the world through the lens of the US presidential election.

I know at least in the US media that everything tends to be seen through this prism, but I think it's also worth being honest that who sits at

the throne probably has some significance in terms of the policies.

Now, it's often pointed out that foreign policy tends to be very, very similar, irrespective

of the Democrats or Republicans being in power.

However, I guess Ukraine would be the main difference in terms of what divides.

But in terms of Trump or Harris presidency, one would also think that, yes, some of the approach to the wider world, both allies as well as adversaries, seems to be very different and also how diplomacy is conducted.

So I thought maybe a good point to start would be to look at what we might expect of Trump, especially his position towards NATO.

He seems to challenge some of the decisions in the security architecture developed over the past 30 years.

How do you see his possible stance towards allies and then specifically NATO if he resumes the presidency?

Let me preface my specific answer to that question with some comments, your comments, just big.

I taught for 16 years at William and Mary and six years in George Washington University

using as one of my principal textbooks, David Rothkoff's book, Running the World.

And if you look on if memory doesn't fail me about page 12 of the hardback copy of that book,

you'll find his five circumstances that

influence national security decision making, thus the NSC. Two of them that are prominent,

one was absolutely prominent with my boss, Colin Powell, are the people doing the decision

making.

The characters, David calls them.

The depth of their character, the shallowness of their character, whatever.

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