But when the threat receded, they were stood down.
Then gradually as the threat receded and as people felt if there is a flu pandemic it won't be too bad, the money died away".
By the early 1960s, a growing population had pushed the number above 800,000 but a few decades later the external threat receded out of sight.Sensibly, Switzerland introduced reforms in 1995 that cut the number to less than half.
A system that was tolerated for decades, during which the principal alternative was the Italian Communist Party, became increasingly intolerable during the nineteen-eighties as the Cold War threat receded, and after the Berlin Wall fell, Italians increasingly rebelled.
Russia could still face a ban from next year's Rio 2016 Olympics although the threat receded on Wednesday when IOC president Thomas Bach admitted the organisation lacked the power to bar the country.
The Japanese threat receded, however, when American control of microprocessor standards came to the fore and the Japanese encountered stiff competition in memory chips in the rest of Asia, the United States and Europe.
"All Saddam would need to do is wait until we were forced to start scaling back our forces in the region, and as the threat receded he would return to his past tactic of 'cheat and retreat' with the inspectors that served him so well in 1991-98," Mr. Pollack writes.
But when each threat receded, the curbs ended and our freedoms were restored.
