Well, NATO was supposedly a military alliance against the Soviet Union, forged out of a re-purposed war time alliance after a barely decent interval had passed to allow the rehabilitation of the Germans.

And clearly you know all this much better than I do, Migeru. I just wonder why the western public is so intensely stupid or indifferent as to tolerate this reflexive reversion of their "alliances" into 19th century Great Game policies. Yet more evidence that the NeoCon dream of repealing the 20th century is close to realisation.