The successive (if very small) increases in the defence budget for the next three years, which average 0.3% in real terms, represent a departure from the pattern of post-cold-war cuts.
The BND's staff, which peaked at more than 7,500 people during the Cold War, was cut significantly after reunification.
Countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary feel that they are culturally part of the west, and that it was only the tragic accident of the cold war that cut them off from the past 50 years of economic and political progress.
Since the cold war, America and Russia have cut their stocks sharply, but they still account for 95% of the world's 20,500 nuclear weapons.
The dialogue between the Cold War foes was cut after Cuba sentenced a US citizen, Alan Gross, to 15 years in prison for smuggling illegal satellite equipment into the country.
After the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon cut the number of Army troops in Europe to 29,000, from 213,000 in 1989, and withdrew the last US tank from Germany three years ago.
Deficits grew under Bush from two unfunded wars, an exploding defense budget now higher than it was at the height of the Cold War, and tax cuts that were skewed to the most affluent Americans.
The principal accords outstanding are the Start II Treaty, which would cut cold war nuclear arsenals in half, and another that would ban nuclear testing.
The debt fell fairly steadily during the cold war, and it was cut to about a third of gross domestic product by the end of the Nixon administration — even as the country retreated into a post-Vietnam War funk.
