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While the magnitude and number of dangerous threats to the nation have been remarkably reduced by the demise of the USSR, we continue to use technology to fill traditional missions better rather than to identify or produce new and more effective solutions for achieving military and strategic/political objectives.
The EU notably France is reacting by trying to assume the role formerly played by the USSR. EU integration is an attempt to assimilate former Soviet satellites and dilute Germany's power by re-jigging rules of voting and representation.
The polities of eastern Europe bitterly divided into the "nostalgics" or "reactionary" versus the "European", or "progressive". The first lot including Russia, Ukraine and Belarus sought to resurrect an economic incarnation of the former USSR. The latter notably Poland reclassified themselves as "central Europeans" and emulated the likes of the Czech republic and Hungary in a desperate bid to curry favor with the European Union and the United States.
At Geneva, I declared the readiness of the United States to exchange blueprints of the military establishments of our nation and the USSR, to be confirmed by reciprocal aerial reconnaissance. By this means, I felt mutual suspicions could be allayed and an atmosphere developed in which negotiations looking toward limitation of arms would have improved chances of success.
With the end of the USSR and absent a hostile Russian superpower, there is no external threat to the existence or survival of the United States as a nation and there will not be such an immediate threat for some time to come.
So a great deal of anti-Americanism faded under pressure of an ardent desire for America to be successful in its self-defense. Moreover, anticipating other alien landings which could take place anywhere, the United States offered to share its stock of atom bombs with any nation so invaded. American popularity increased. The fact that the USSR made no such proposal also had its effect.
Following the truce ending the Korean War, a large, standing military force was maintained and defined by the operational requirements of fighting the large formations of military forces of the USSR and its allies with similar types of military forces, albeit outnumbered.
Although the absolute danger has been dramatically reduced with the end of the USSR, it would be the height of folly to assume that there are no risks to the nation nor an absence of evil-doers wishing this nation harm.
The USSR was to be contained and deterred from hostile action by a combination of political, strategic, and military actions ranging from the forging of a ring of alliances surrounding the USSR and its allies to the deployment of tens of thousands of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.
When the latter died and the USSR evaporated, the region imploded. Countries from the USSR to Italy to Belgium to Canada to Yugoslavia were gradually reduced to geopolitical atoms: provinces, districts, regions, resurrected political units. Faced with the Yugoslav wars of succession, the Big Powers again chose wrongly.
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