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Updated: June 22, 2025
In the wake of the implosion of the USSR in 1989-91, the newly independent countries of the Baltic and central Europe, traumatized by decades of brutal Soviet imperialism, sought to fend off future Russian encroachment. Entering NATO and the EU was perceived by them as the equivalent of obtaining geopolitical insurance policies against a repeat performance of their tortured histories.
The USSR, after all, did not hesitate to exercise overwhelming military might against ostensible allies such as Hungary and the Czechoslovaks ? Try telling this to the Serbs who were demonized by west European media and then bombarded to smithereens by NATO aircraft in 1999.
Extending this historical observation of small standing forces, it is clear that there is no adversary on the horizon even remotely approaching the military power of the former USSR. While we might conjure up nominal regional contingencies against Korea or Iraq as sensible planning scenarios for establishing the building blocks for force structure, it will prove difficult to sustain the current defense program over the long term without a real threat materializing to rally and coalesce public support.
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