WHEN the Warsaw Pact ended, after the collapse of communism, some optimists might have expected Nato to be broken up too.

After all, the Labour Party in Britain had been opposed to Nato in the mid-1980s. But that was not to be. The US, which had always dominated Nato, quickly began to reinvent Nato and furthermore to expand it.

Following the end of the Warsaw Pact many central and east European governments wanted to join Nato.