Australia and other Pacific nations' invitation to NATO meeting signals strategic shift for allianceBy political editor Andrew Probyn in Madrid
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Anthony Albanese is one of four Pacific leaders who have been invited to attend the NATO meeting.(AAP: Lukas Coch) 6park.com
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Eight years ago, Tony Abbott infamously promised to "shirtfront" Vladimir Putin over the downing of MH17 over Ukraine.
Back then, the Russian President was somewhat dismissed, even derided, by the West as an oddball despot, yanking unyielding levers of the rusting relic that was the Soviet war machine.
Much of the world simply didn't know who he really was or the extent of his ambitions. Not that those who did know Putin didn't at least attempt to warn the West. 
They included one Russian guest to an Australian diplomatic reception in Moscow in 2016 who described Putin as "a Brezhnev-era KGB officer thirsting for retribution for the humiliation of the Soviet military in Afghanistan and defeat in the Cold War".
Putin's boiling resentment and disdain for the West, especially the United States, is now understood.

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And with Putin's revisionist ambition having revealed itself — leading to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February — an even greater challenge to the global network of democracies has emerged: his strategic alignment with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi is a leader who also appears tormented by his own nation's humiliations in the 20th century. This is now expressed in China's territorial claims — not just in regards to Taiwan but in Beijing's aggressive antics in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
Not long before the Russian invasion, Xi and Putin announced a "friendship with no limits", magnifying the threat to the West with its presumed coordination.
Which explains why what is happening in Ukraine is of direct concern to Australia and other nations in the Indo-Pacific, and why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is joining the leaders of New Zealand, Japan and South Korea — the so-called Asia Pacific Four, or AP4 — in attending the NATO meeting in Madrid.
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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will also attend the meeting.(AAP: David Rowland)
'Distant events' a thing of the past
And it is also why a military alliance named after the North Atlantic, formed after World War II to unite the US and western-European security interests, should now be invested in matters beyond its original strategic objectives.
"In the current age, there are no distant events," former ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis told the ABC.
"Everything is only a tweet or screenshot away.
"NATO realises that nothing is far distant anymore, that its interests are invoked on the other side of the world."  
Lewis, a former ambassador to NATO and now a national security professor at the ANU National Security College, says the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the "most profound event" of the 21st century to date.
He describes the invasion as an "imperial war dripping with colonial practice".
"If the Russians achieve what they want in an enduring way in Ukraine, it would set a new and dangerously low bar height on interference in other countries by military force," he said. 
"In the Indo-Pacific that relates directly to President Xi's longstanding public claim that he intends to reunite China with Taiwan." 6park.com