This week’s NATO leaders summit – where Australia will have a diminished presence – comes amid an increasingly gloomy outlook for international security, with US and European politics in turmoil, Russia’s war on Ukraine at a stalemate, heightened tensions in the Middle East and China’s actions increasingly under the microscope.

Far from being celebratory, NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington will highlight the threads between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, and their efforts to upend the international rules-based order that liberal Western democracies have nourished after World War II.