Back at SHAPE, our daily lives quickly became dominated by the crisis in Ukraine and how NATO should respond. At the end of one briefing, SACEUR, NATO’s strategic commander, a genial, Harley Davidson–riding, US Air Force fighter pilot from the Deep South, asked me for my thoughts as a land commander. “Phil,” I replied, “the NATO nations won’t like it, but now is the time to deploy a brigade to the Baltic States to show the Russians that we’re serious about defending them.”

Sadly, and in the course of this book you will see why, this was a political bridge too far for the North Atlantic Council. But militarily and, I would argue, politically, it was the right thing to do. An all-arms brigade of 5,000 men with tanks, armored infantry, attack helicopters, and artillery would have sent a powerful message to the President: “Thus far perhaps, but no further.” It would also have irrevocably bound all NATO nations into the defense of the Baltic States.

I quickly made two more phone calls, to Air Chief Marshal Stu Peach, the UK’s Vice Chief of Defense Staff, in the Ministry of Defense in London, and to Mariot Leslie, the UK’s Ambassador to NATO in Brussels. I suggested that now was the time for Britain to show solidarity with the Baltic States and particularly with Estonia, whose lion-hearted soldiers had fought and died alongside American and British soldiers in faraway Afghanistan. That America’s battle-hardened troops would be there, ready and willing to defend the values of individual freedom, democracy, and the rule of law which had made the USA such a beacon of hope for the world, I had little doubt. The wheels of government turned and, shortly afterwards, to his credit, the British prime minister authorized the deployment of four RAF Typhoons to Estonia. But the question remained: would the effort be sustained?

And then, at the end of March, my thirty-seven-year military career was over and I left SHAPE to start a new civilian life. I was, however, interested to note that, in May 2015, just over a year after I had first suggested it, the Estonian Chief of Defense called for NATO to deploy a brigade to the Baltic States to show its solidarity with those small and vulnerable countries, as its massive and ever more aggressive neighbor continued to ramp up its military activity on their borders. Sadly that request fell on deaf ears until, under American leadership, the NATO alliance agreed to forward base four battalions in the Baltic States and eastern Poland.

How had it come to this? How was it that Russia, whom NATO considered its most important strategic partner as late as 2014, was ripping up the post–Cold War settlement of Europe in our collective and shocked faces? And how had we been taken so much by surprise?