In the rolling hills of Limburg, near Margraten, they slowly loom up, row after row: the thousands of white marble crosses and Stars of David. They mark the final resting place of nearly 8,300 American soldiers who died during World War II. While the headstones provide us with the names of the mostly young men involved in the liberation of the Netherlands, they do not tell us who the soldiers were and who they left behind. Moreover, the peace and quiet at the only American war cemetery in the...

On 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created ‘to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’. Seven decades later, the largest military alliance ever created still exists. Yet we live in a different world with immense security challenges. Are we ready for this?

Is NATO ‘brain-dead’, as French President Emmanuel Macron has it said?

Or does it just have a new future ahead of it?

In this book, Theo Francken, Hendrik Bogaert and Peter Buy...