Just over a year ago, the western system of alliances largely lay in ruins, its confidence sapped by Covid and by a US president who saw Europe as a protection racket, treated Nato with contempt and seemed in mysterious thrall to Vladimir Putin. Six months later, Nato suffered the ignominy of the retreat from Kabul and two months after that it lost Angela Merkel – the former German chancellor who was its last best interpreter of Vladimir Putin’s mind.
So as a hinge point in the Ukraine crisis arrives, western diplomats are awarding themselves a sigh of relief that diplomatic and security institutions, atrophied by lack of use, have at last cranked back into life and held together. No one is proposing a victory lap – the situation is too tense and unstable – but there is satisfaction that Putin knows he faces a surprisingly cohesive, even galvanised, western diplomatic effort built on exhaustive consultation and shared analysis.
