The time when foreign invasions were impossible is over, former diplomats tell defence conference [Video]

At the onset of the First World War, Britain’s veritable foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, remarked that the lamps were going out all over Europe and “we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

The metaphor has long been considered as the unofficial epitaph to what at the time was the longest run of peace and prosperity on the continent.

The retelling of that story has become commonplace since the invasion of Ukraine.

It was hard not to think of it this week when listening to both a former NATO secretary general and the man who was Lithuania’s foreign minister as they each delivered stark assessments of where the world is going and how it got here.

Neither Lord George Robertson, who led the Western military alliance from 1999 to 2003, nor Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Baltic nation’s top diplomat for years, argued that we’re on the cusp of …