When Nato held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s President Emmanuel Macron had publicly declared Nato “brain-dead” in 2019, and nobody could find a good reason to disagree.
This week the annual meeting is in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, (11-12 July), and the cast of characters has not changed all that much, but everything else has. This is an alliance transformed, with a clear enemy, specific goals and a real sense of purpose — all thanks to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his foolish invasion of Ukraine.
It was foolish not because Mr Putin’s army was too corrupt and incompetent to conquer Ukraine — neither he nor his generals realised that — but because he woke Nato up. If he had just left it alone for another five or ten years, it would probably have simply mouldered away in the end.
