"I think one lesson in recent history," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on January 7, referring to the entry of Russian troops into Kazakhstan to save that country's allied regime from an uprising of dissatisfied serfs, "is that once Russians are in your house, it's sometimes very difficult to get them to leave."

That's the pot calling the kettle black. More than 30 years after the Warsaw Pact's dissolution, 77 years after the end of World War Two, the US still keeps 40,000 troops in Germany.

For 45 years, the justification was to defend Germany from the Soviet Union and the Wars...