New Delhi, Jan. 24 -- The air in Davos this year was thick with trepidation.

It wasn't just anxiety about the global economy that weighed on those gathered at the World Economic Forum. Looming larger was the fate of the much-vaunted transatlantic alliance-and whether US President Donald Trump would act on his threat to seize Greenland from Denmark by force, a move that would have effectively shattered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The irony was hard to miss.

NATO was formed in 1949 to contain the former Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) removed that original threat.

More recently, Russia-particularly after its invasion of Ukraine-has ...