The World Will Watch This NATO Summit

What a difference half a year makes. In early 2014, NATO was preparing for a not-too-exciting summit in Wales on September 4-5, dutifully filling the agenda with issues such as this year's withdrawal from Afghanistan, partnerships with nonalliance countries, "smart defense," and readiness. Six months ago, the big overarching question was how NATO could master the transition from an alliance deployed in Afghanistan and elsewhere to a postoperational organization, desperate to cling on to the military skills and lessons it had learned over a decade of operations. Now, NATO is preparing for the most important summit in recent memory-perhaps not quite historic, but definitely under intense scrutiny and with potentially enormous ramifications for the alliance's future posture.