The new world for which the greatest generation sacrificed in the bloody surf of the Normandy beaches is fading into history along with the last of the old soldiers.
The 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings observed by President Joe Biden in France on Thursday will likely be the last major decennial commemoration attended by significant numbers of veterans. Even a 19-year-old who stormed ashore in the biggest amphibious operation in history would soon be 100.
Biden is certain to cite an unrepayable debt owed to US, British, Canadian and other troops involved in Operation Overlord. He'll walk among row upon row of white crosses and Stars of David shaded by pine trees and oaks overlooking Omaha Beach. This is where more than 9,000 fallen Americans from all 50 states and the District of Columbia lay at rest thousands of miles from the land they left to save foreigners they'd never met.
This year's memorial ceremony represents far more than a poignant farewell to surviving comrades of more than 150,000 allied troops that forged a beachhead for the liberation of Europe from Adolf Hitler's Nazis.
Presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from NATO nations are gathering at a paradoxical moment. They are unusually united but experiencing growing dread. The alliance has a new sense of mission in opposing another war started by a tyrant bent on territorial expansion — this time in Ukraine. But at no point since June 6, 1944, has US leadership of the West and support for internationalist values that the invasion enshrined been so in question.
Democracy is facing its sternest test in generations from far-right populism on the march on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Geopolitical empires like Russia and China are meanwhile resurgent and threatening to obliterate the global system dominated by Western values that has prevailed since World War II.
European nations that were already rattled by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's constant attacks on NATO in his first term have been further rocked by his recent comment that he'd let Russia do "whatever the hell they want" with allies that he regarded as failing to "pay their bills" on defense spending. The comment weakens the foundational NATO creed of mutual self-defense, without which the alliance has no meaning. Some of Trump's ex-advisors have warned that he might try to exit the alliance if he wins a second term in November. Even if Biden wins, there are growing indications that America's willingness to maintain the security guarantees — even to former enemies like Germany and Japan that bought 80 years of peace — may be waning.
Trump's "America First" philosophy has taken deep root in the Republican Party that once prided itself on winning the Cold War. Some GOP figures, led by the ex-president, now appear to have more empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin than for the liberal European democracies that the United States rebuilt after World War II. And the months-long delay in funding Biden's most recent aid package for Ukraine has raised doubts that Washington will always stand up for democracy in Europe.
