"The Vilnius NATO summit of 2023 was stalked by a spectre. How would the allies deal with Ukraine’s NATO aspirations while its vaunted counter-offensive had gotten off to a sputtering start, amidst nuclear saber rattling by Vladimir Putin and his henchmen, eliciting in turn a focus on “escalation management” by Joe Biden’s national security team. Vilnius ended, as all NATO summits are fated to end – as a success, despite unseemly recriminations between the Biden team and President Zelensky’s advisors.
This year’s Washington summit took place in the suffocating, sultry heat and humidity of a typical D.C. July. It gridlocked the city with intersection closures to facilitate motorcades of 32 NATO national leaders plus key Indo-Pacific allies. It was stalked by two quite different phantasms – the spectre of weak leadership among Western leaders, notably including host President Joe Biden, and what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has characterized as the most dangerous and challenging international security environment since World War Two."