The real threat to NATO

With NATO holding its annual summit in Ankara this week, the alliance faces a bigger challenge than either Russia or China: its members no longer share a coherent understanding of the values, economic order, geopolitical vision and legal principles it was created to defend. Every enduring military alliance ultimately hinges on a deceptively simple question: What is it defending? Without a clear answer, it becomes reactive, defining itself by its adversaries rather than by a common purpose. When NATO was founded in 1949, that purpose was clear.