NATO was proclaimed brain-dead only three years ago by France’s President. Now it seems resurrected. Key member states like the USA and Britain have rallied around Ukraine, arming its resistance against Russia. Finland and Sweden are on course to join the alliance, creating a NATO boarder with Russia. Putin meanwhile has retreated from his original ambitions in Ukraine. It might seem like the West is winning. This thinking is dangerously close to wishful thinking. The contingencies of war and Russia’s willingness to keep the military conflict going mean nothing is decided yet. With China on its mind and resources that won’t stretch between two oceans, NATO needs to decide what a satisfactory victory in Ukraine would amount to before some of its thirty members grow tired, writes Hew Strachan.

NATO has staged a remarkable recovery since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In 2014 it effectively condoned Russian aggression. In 2016 the United States elected a President who regarded its European members as free-loaders, dependent on American security. In 2019 the President of France described NATO as brain dead. In 2021 it was missing in action as Kabul fell. Unsurprisingly, Putin was not deterred by the threat of western sanctions in 2022. When they came, the sanctions failed twice over, neither preventing Russia’s offensive nor halting it once it was under way.