The Ben Shapiro Show - July 09, 2026


NATO, Explained: Why It Started and Where It's Going


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

204.91

Word count

1,711

Sentence count

109

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

27

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump meets with the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and agrees to give Ukraine a license to make Patriot missiles, a move that could have a big impact on Ukraine's ability to defend itself against missiles fired by Russia.

Transcript

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Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Before we get to what President Trump just did with Ukraine this week, I want to back up because most people throw the term NATO around with no idea what it actually is or why it was built or why it's suddenly the center of everything again.
00:00:10.000 So I need to walk you through some of this to understand what President Trump is doing.
00:00:14.000 Well, when NATO was created back in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine was kind of the exact scenario it was built to stop.
00:00:24.000 Okay. 0.87
00:00:24.000 That's what it was designed to do. 0.87
00:00:25.000 NATO was created in order to counter Russia.
00:00:29.000 Clearly, obviously.
00:00:31.000 The entire goal of NATO was to counter the aggressive moves of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and their attempt to aggressively expand their territorial holdings into Central and Western Europe.
00:00:40.000 That's what NATO was designed to do. 0.58
00:00:42.000 It was also designed to make sure that Germany would not rise again and sort of overcome the rest of the continent, no World War III from Germany, and also to keep the United States involved.
00:00:50.000 That's what NATO was designed to do.
00:00:52.000 And things have not really, really changed.
00:00:54.000 As we've seen, the president was at this NATO summit over in Ankara.
00:00:59.000 The president has been right for years about NATO self funding, about nations in NATO having to increase their funding.
00:01:05.000 He's been right about that for years.
00:01:06.000 Now, let's take a second and review what NATO is for.
00:01:09.000 Originally, NATO was formed in the aftermath of World War II.
00:01:13.000 The basic idea of NATO was to keep the Germans down, meaning you didn't want a reconstituted, unified Germany that was going to launch World War III, to keep the Americans in, meaning keeping America's interests protected in Europe, and to keep the Russians out, meaning keep the Russian bear at bay.
00:01:27.000 That's what NATO was formed to do. 0.70
00:01:28.000 Those three things keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.
00:01:32.000 That's what it was for. 0.95
00:01:33.000 Over time, it was no longer important to keep the Germans down because the Germans. Had moderated and you no longer had a Nazi regime or a Nazi adjacent regime. 0.72
00:01:41.000 And so, as things developed, the other two things ended up being quite critical keeping the United States in and keeping the Russians out. 0.71
00:01:46.000 NATO was always, always an anti Russian force. 0.94
00:01:51.000 That's what it was for.
00:01:52.000 Why?
00:01:53.000 Well, because Russia, its interests, as we used to know until 30 seconds ago, are adversarial to those of the West.
00:01:59.000 I know that there are propagandists out there who are either being paid or are just dumb, who are maintaining that somehow Russia's interests are aligned with our own.
00:02:07.000 I would like to see one single solitary shred of evidence this is the case. 0.69
00:02:11.000 Certainly, Putin does not say that when he is speaking in Russian to his own people.
00:02:14.000 Certainly, his chief philosopher, Alexander Dugin, doesn't say that. 0.55
00:02:17.000 Instead, the idea is that Russian imperial adventurism abroad is necessary to the Russian identity, which is why Russia, over the past couple of weeks, has been threatening Poland.
00:02:28.000 They're prodding, they're trying to see where NATO is weak.
00:02:31.000 Well, the president, until now, has had this kind of bizarre position where he wants NATO to spend more on self defense, but he won't say self defense against whom, right?
00:02:39.000 Because again, I also want NATO to spend on its own defense, but that defense is mostly directed against, wait for Russia. 0.75
00:02:45.000 Well, the president seems to be waking up to the reality that perhaps the Russians are, in fact, the problem. 0.86
00:02:51.000 He had a very good meeting with Vladimir Zelensky, the prime minister of Ukraine, and it went very well. 0.93
00:03:00.000 Trump said that he would let Ukraine make Patriots, Patriot missiles.
00:03:03.000 One of the things we're going to be talking about is we're going to give a license to you to make Patriots.
00:03:09.000 That's pretty cool, right?
00:03:11.000 This way you can't complain that we're not giving them enough.
00:03:13.000 I say, make them yourself.
00:03:16.000 We haven't informed the company of that yet, but that'll work out all right.
00:03:23.000 So, according to the New York Times, Ukraine has long pressed its Western allies for more Patriot interceptors, but global inventories are under severe strain.
00:03:31.000 And so, Ukraine has now been given the ability to develop its own Patriots, which are shooting down, they're made for shooting down missiles coming the other way.
00:03:41.000 Ukraine's Air Force did not intercept any of the 23 ballistic missiles launched by Russia last week.
00:03:48.000 Zelensky said in an evening address on Monday, again, he's the president of Ukraine, we have long made the case we are capable of producing such defensive weapons ourselves.
00:03:55.000 If Ukraine were granted U.S. licenses to produce Patriots, our own production would be sufficient to both protect Ukraine and to help partners in need. 0.58
00:04:01.000 So it's good. 0.73
00:04:02.000 You know, the president is recognizing this.
00:04:04.000 President Trump asked Zelensky if he would go to Moscow, and it turned a little funny.
00:04:10.000 President Putin said, I would love to meet in Moscow.
00:04:15.000 And I said, I don't think, you know, I have to put myself in this position.
00:04:19.000 I don't know that he'd go to Moscow.
00:04:21.000 Maybe he would.
00:04:22.000 Would you go to Moscow?
00:04:23.000 It's difficult.
00:04:24.000 There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there. 0.99
00:04:33.000 Zelensky getting off a pretty good line there.
00:04:35.000 Okay, but the reality is the president seems to be awaking to Russia's nefarious influence in the region.
00:04:39.000 Now, I will say that the downside of the NATO summit was the president's warm verbiage about Turkey. 0.62
00:04:44.000 Turkey is, in fact, a nefarious force in the region.
00:04:46.000 Turkey is very much wedded to terrorist groups, including Hamas, terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.62
00:04:52.000 Turkey does have its own imperial ambitions in the Middle East, they extend down into Syria.
00:04:58.000 It is Turkey, presumably, that has been suggesting Syrian involvement in Lebanon, which is a terrible, terrible idea. 0.76
00:05:03.000 Turkey, of course, is very close with Russia.
00:05:05.000 So, if the idea of NATO was a counter Russian weight, Turkey originally joined NATO in 1952 as a weight against Russia.
00:05:12.000 That is why it was joined to NATO.
00:05:15.000 America used to have Jupiter missiles stationed in Turkey for this reason. 0.75
00:05:19.000 If Turkey is just going to be a Russian cat's paw, there's no reason for them to be part of NATO anymore.
00:05:23.000 Certainly, selling them F 35s would be a pretty terrible idea. 0.68
00:05:26.000 Turkey is basically triangulating.
00:05:27.000 They want our weaponry, but they really want to align their interests with China, Russia, and Iran.
00:05:32.000 That's what Turkey is doing. 0.93
00:05:33.000 So, mistake to draw Turkey close because, again, you're welcoming an adder into your bed. 0.79
00:05:39.000 Now, is NATO still useful? 0.98
00:05:40.000 The answer, of course, is that NATO, of course, is still useful.
00:05:43.000 The reason that you know that NATO is useful is because we actually are the country that has invoked NATO Article 5 and actually countries responded to it.
00:05:51.000 This happened back during the Afghanistan war.
00:05:53.000 After September 11th, we declared an assault on a NATO ally, and other NATO nations came in and helped us in the war in Afghanistan.
00:06:01.000 And the reality is that obviously, If NATO is to be relevant in the future, it is going to have to take on threats that don't just exist in sort of Eastern Europe.
00:06:11.000 Now, of course, they are going to have to take on threats in Eastern Europe.
00:06:14.000 That is going to be a real thing.
00:06:16.000 But is Russia still a threat? 0.98
00:06:17.000 Of course, Russia is still a threat.
00:06:18.000 They openly say they are a threat.
00:06:19.000 They say that they see what they call the Atlanticist problem.
00:06:23.000 And they identify NATO as the key lodestar of all of this.
00:06:27.000 That there's sort of an Atlanticist vision of the world represented by America, NATO as a sort of military ally versus the Russian vision of the world.
00:06:35.000 You want to know why Russia wishes to destroy NATO?
00:06:37.000 It's not just because they think with NATO dead, they can take over additional territory.
00:06:41.000 It's because they see the entire Western alliance as antithetical to Russia's role in the world.
00:06:47.000 They do not make a secret of this.
00:06:49.000 People who are over there sniffing the bread in Moscow or hanging out with the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg, the reason they are doing that has nothing to do with the idea that Russia is somehow a magical American ally or that Russia has got it civilizationally correct. 0.89
00:07:05.000 That is untrue and it is silly to boot. 0.53
00:07:08.000 NATO exists because Russia is dangerous. 0.96
00:07:10.000 Just as the United States will be forced to do something in the Strait of Hormuz because Iran is dangerous. 0.93
00:07:14.000 Our enemies don't magically become not our enemies because we wish it were so.
00:07:19.000 Now, the big thing that President Trump has done right with NATO is he has declared that NATO needs to be an actual real alliance.
00:07:24.000 You want us to help out in places like Ukraine?
00:07:26.000 Great, we're happy to do it.
00:07:27.000 You need to help us out in places like the Strait of Hormuz.
00:07:30.000 You need to help us counter Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait.
00:07:33.000 Like, if you just want NATO to be about European defense, well, then you guys really should fund it and do it yourself.
00:07:39.000 Either we are an alliance or we are not an alliance.
00:07:41.000 If we're an alliance, then that alliance should be more durable than just a territorial problem in Ukraine or in Georgia or in Crimea.
00:07:50.000 It ought to be about more than that.
00:07:52.000 And this is where President Trump is right.
00:07:54.000 A future strong NATO is going to have to see itself as a more durable alliance, as an alliance that has interests that extend beyond mere problems in Eastern or Central Europe.
00:08:04.000 Because if the argument is that America needs to be involved in the world because the world is a smaller place, the same thing holds true of NATO.
00:08:12.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:08:14.000 Wasn't that amazing?
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