I was an air intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force for almost 9 1/2 years, and most of that time was spent analyzing and reporting on the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. During my assignment to what was then West Germany, as part of a U.S. intelligence detachment in a nuclear-blast-resistant bunker that would serve as one of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) primary war headquarters, I had the opportunity to learn a great deal about the history of the alliance and how...