Keeping it real at NATO

It is standard for think tankers, journalists and sometimes even U.S. officials to cast geopolitical meetings as being especially important for one reason or another. “The event comes amid unusually high tensions between X and Y.” “The gathering could prove a turning point in the blah blah of the so-and-so.” Your host is guilty of having written such sentences. They are, after all, a way to convince readers to keep reading and hard to disprove. But in looking at the political, economic and military landscape ahead of the NATO summit...