If anything positive can be said to have resulted from this week's NATO summit in Washington, it is that it occasioned a series of thoughtful critiques from the few remaining citadels of dissent within the U.S. foreign policy community.  

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft published a symposium, "to reflect on the past and future of the alliance." The scholar and author Anatol Lieven who convened the symposium writes, 

NATO likes to describe itself as "the most successful alliance in history"…. What is too often forgotten, however, is that war was prevented not just by NATO solidarity, but also by NATO caution. Successive U.S. administrations—fully backed by their European allies—rejected calls for aggressive policies aimed at "rolling back" Soviet power in Eastern Europe.

A statement published on Monday by the American Committee for US–Russia Accord (which I co-authored with the editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel) expressed the wish that NATO might use the opportunity of this week's summit "to take a cold-eyed look at itself; at its record; and at its mission—and begin the hard work of self-evaluation."  

And yet another statement issued by a constellation of foreign policy experts warned against another round of expansion: "Admitting Ukraine would reduce the security of the United States and NATO Allies, at considerable risk to all." 

Yet, as far as NATO was concerned: Message delivered, message ignored. This week's summit showed that NATO is bound and determined to continue on as though the alliance operates in a world shaped by its successes—manifesting a blind insistence that the alliance is not only necessary but has been right all along. 

NATO's principal institutional prerogative at this point is not the defeat of Russia nor the collective defense of the West—whatever that means. It is its own survival—and as such, in Washington the alliance kept busy inventing ever-more reasons to justify its relevance, and ultimately its very existence.

The chief justification revolves, naturally, around the war in Ukraine. And for some months, little by little, American and European officials and government-funded strategists have been laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as Ukraine's "Bridge to NATO."