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The 2026 NATO summit is now history, though it wasn’t exactly historic. If you were hoping for a rekindling of common purpose and a renewed sense of trans-Atlantic solidarity, you have my sympathies. If you thought the meeting in Ankara would mark NATO’s death knell, perhaps sparked by a typical Trumpian temper tantrum, you didn’t get that either. Instead, what transpired was a deliberate and mostly successful effort to ignore the obvious tensions, avoid big headlines, and kick the can down the road.

But nobody should be under any illusions: The alliance is a sick puppy. When every NATO summit convenes amid fears that its strongest member will blow it all up and withdraw and then ends with a collective sigh of relief that this outcome was averted, it’s hardly a reassuring sign of strategic alignment or shared values.

The 2026 NATO summit is now history, though it wasn’t exactly historic. If you were hoping for a rekindling of common purpose and a renewed sense of trans-Atlantic solidarity, you have my sympathies. If you thought the meeting in Ankara would mark NATO’s death knell, perhaps sparked by a typical Trumpian temper tantrum, you didn’t get that either. Instead, what transpired was a deliberate and mostly successful effort to ignore the obvious tensions, avoid big headlines, and kick the can down the road.

But nobody should be under any illusions: The alliance is a sick puppy. When every NATO summit convenes amid fears that its strongest member will blow it all up and withdraw and then ends with a collective sigh of relief that this outcome was averted, it’s hardly a reassuring sign of strategic alignment or shared values.

It’s tempting to blame trans-Atlantic tensions solely on U.S. President Donald Trump (more on that below), but NATO’s core problem is structural. Military alliances are not ends in themselves; they are simply a means by which states seek to make themselves more secure in the face of a common threat. And no matter your view of Russia today, NATO’s members do not face the same clarifying, focus-the-mind threat environment that existed when the alliance formed back in 1949. Russia is a worrisome neighbor, to be sure, but it........

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