2. NATO is an artifact of the early Cold War and the Truman Doctrine, vowing any means necessary to stop the spread of Communism. Founded in 1949, when the U.S. ruled most of the world, it included most of the countries of Europe except for those liberated from Nazism by the Soviets, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and Yugoslavia and Albania where anti-fascist partisans seized power.

3. After the dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact (a defense alliance formed in 1956 after West Germany was included in NATO) in 1990, and the full restoration of capitalism to the countries of the former Soviet Union, there was no ideological east-west conflict or another rationale to maintain the NATO alliance. It gradually redefined its mission as "maintaining stability" in the post-Soviet era, in the wake of ethnic conflicts across Eurasia, and "counter-terrorism." Later "humanitarian" missions were added.