Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Not so long ago, Russia, the KGB and the Soviet Union were feared by all of Europe and watched closely by the United States and other members of NATO. During the Cold War, the U.S. established a very large permanent military presence in Europe to protect our NATO allies and the rest of the world from the communist military war machine Russia and the KGB turned the Soviet Union into after World War II. They mass produced military weapons, vehicles and equipment. They also mass produced nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. The KGB, what some naïve people claim was dismantled with the so-called fall of Russia, was the heart and brain of the Soviet war machine.

During the mid-1980s, what was once considered the most feared war machine and country on the planet became almost completely submissive to the United States and the rest of NATO. Cold War border check points, fences, mine fields and walls that served to keep Soviet Bloc citiz...