Talking of the old soviet air force and such, in the bad old days we had NATO forces facing down the Red Army and the Warsaw Pact. NATO had a massive Headquarters in Brussels to handle all the paperwork involved in such an enterprise. Now that the Red Army threat is downgraded and most of the old Warsaw Pact countries are either in, or soon to be in the EU, one would imagine that NATO could unwind a bit and downsize.
Not so! The immutable Parkinson's law governing the expansion of bureaucracyy holds sway. Each day as I ride the No. 12 to Zaventem we stop outside NATO HQ, where all the Civil Serpents and military officers unsuccessfully disguised as civilians are disgorged. Across the road from the familiar old buildings is a massive building project. The image on the developer's signboard shows a mighty single span roof rising seven stories high while covering a space of 200,000 sq metres. This monstrosity is to be the new NATO Headquarters - the old buildings will remain, of course.
One can't help but wonder how much of our own scarce defence budget is being used to pay our contribution to this project and how many of our overworked and underpaid officers will ship out discretely to work in disguise in Brussels, planning the further downfall of the Warsaw Pact?