If Joe Biden is inclined to step aside as president (granted, a big if), don’t expect him to do so until after Thursday. That will be the last day of the NATO summit in Washington, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic alliance. Biden will make sure to host that event, even if it’s (literally) the last thing he does as leader of the free world.

The summit, which starts Tuesday, will be a grand convocation of the Western leaders, with splendid rhetoric to match. The agenda is well planned; the concluding document is prebaked: It will welcome Sweden as the latest of the alliance’s 32 members. It will proclaim that, for the first time, the alliance overall has met its pledge to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. It will reaffirm, and considerably boost, military support for Ukraine. It will lay out a road map to welcome Ukraine into the alliance at … well, some point in the not-too-distant future.

Finally, the assembled leaders, in their opening or farewell speeches, will thank Biden not just for convening the summit but for his huge role in making its accomplishments possible.

And they will be telling the truth. Biden has done much to revitalize NATO after the four years of Donald Trump’s neglect and hostility. More broadly, Biden has made foreign policy the centerpiece of his half-century-long political career, as senator, vice president, and president. Throughout, he has touted alliances as key to an effective foreign policy, and he has heralded NATO as the central alliance, without which American interests and values could not long........

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