Bangladesh, Dec. 27 -- When NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warns that Western Europe could be drifting toward a war with Russia “like our grandparents experienced,” the statement is meant to sound grave, historic, and statesmanlike. Instead, it lands as darkly ironic. Rutte invoking history is a bold rhetorical move for a politician whose defining trait, throughout fourteen years as Dutch prime minister, was his remarkable inability to remember his own actions-sometimes from days earlier, sometimes from weeks, and occasionally from moments that had been inconveniently documented.

That is the paradox now sitting atop NATO. A man famous at home for “no active memory” now presents himself as Europes vigilant histo...