After more than 100 years in the rainforest, Varî Vãti Marubo walks with a stick and, as she always has, barefoot.

So when her Indigenous tribe, the Marubo, gathered for meetings this year in a village that would require a 13-mile hike across streams, fallen logs and dense forest to reach, everyone knew it would be difficult for her to attend.

But, as she has for a century, Varî Vãti dealt with the elements. She caught a ride on the only transportation available: her son’s back.

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Long seen as punching below its weight, Canada, the world’s second-largest country by area and one of its seven wealthiest economies, said it would meet its NATO pledge to significantly bolster its military spending by 2032.

But everything about the commitment, which NATO is pushing all alliance members to make, is fraught.

Some have criticized the timeline as too protracted, though it is actually compressed if seen through the lens of the slow pace of global military hardware production.

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When a left-wing coalition came first this month in France’s parliamentary elections and upended a predicted victory for the far right, supporters filled the streets. Some cried, some danced. “The left has awakened,” a supporter said. “We’ve shown that something else is possible.”

Less than two weeks later, that seemed less certain.

Almost immediately after their victory, the parties in the coalition started fighting among themselves. Then on Thursday, their candidate lost the election for the president of the National Assembly, a vote that had gained outsize importance in a fragmented political landscape in which no party or bloc holds an outright majority.

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