But what seemed to be making it particularly serious for some of those seated around that circular table was that the meeting had been called over lunchtime, because of difficulties in programming the Secretary General’s attendance. Some ambassadors were already showing irritation at missing out on their daily, all-expenses-paid lunch. Despite the seriousness of the world situation, McKinlay couldn’t help chuckling to himself as he watched the emergency solution to the developing culinary crisis; a couple of Belgian waiters, in white shirts, black bow ties and waistcoats, entered and began to circulate mini-bars of extra-dark Cote d’Or chocolate to help quell the growing pangs of ambassadorial hunger.

Chocolate safely dispensed and waiters removed, the Secretary General opened the meeting. He invited the Latvian ambassador, as the representative of the principal nation under threat, to open the discussion.

“Secretary General, my fellow ambassadors, generals, dear colleagues and friends, only once in its sixty-eight-year history has NATO agreed the declaration of Article Five, and that was after the unprecedented attack on the USA on the eleventh of September 2001. A day of infamy we will all remember only too well. Today the motion before you is to declare an Article Five emergency at the request of my country and our close friends and neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania. I will leave it to the Estonian and Lithuanian ambassadors to explain their countries” positions. But from the Latvian perspective, what we have seen in the past few months, and most graphically in the rioting in Riga yesterday, is the progressive application of the new Russian techniques of warfare designed to undermine the integrity of Latvia before there is any need to cross our boundaries with an invasion force.

“The very rules of war have changed and what we are witnessing in Latvia is the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals; war, as it were, by other means. The advantages we in Latvia enjoy as a result of NATO’s unconditional guarantee of collective defense are being nullified by the sophisticated application of hybrid or asymmetric techniques by Russia, techniques we saw most recently in the invasion of eastern Ukraine and Crimea three years ago. In essence, to paraphrase General Gareyev, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, what we are seeing is the use of special operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of what Russia has deemed to be an enemy state; my peaceful, democratic, freedom-loving Latvia.”

He stopped for a sip of water in order to control his emotions.