How NATO became a weak and empty shell

A combination of geopolitical and psychological factors turned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into an empty, hollow shell in the nearly 20 years following the collapse of communism.

First came the "peace dividend." With the disintegration of the Soviet Union that began in 1989 and climaxed at the end of 1991, Western European nations and the United States felt they had no reason to fear Russian conventional land forces again.


The Soviet Union, before it collapsed, had agreed to stringent reductions in its troop levels in Central Europe anyway in the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, and the Russian Federation, as the main successor state to the Soviet Union, honored those commitments.

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