"According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ "Military Balance" publication — a widely-used and well-respected unclassified compendium of information about the world’s armed forces — in 1989, just before the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union deployed a total of 64 divisions in what was then known as its “Western Theater of Military Operations.” These are the Russian forces that would have been hurled at NATO in an attack on Western Europe. They would have been reinforced by another 700,000 troops from the USSR’s three frontline Warsaw Pact allies, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In all, more than 100 divisions would have been available for a drive into West Germany and beyond. The six countries committed to defending NATO’s front lines — West Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands — meanwhile deployed only 21 or so divisions in Germany. While NATO divisions were generally somewhat larger than their Warsaw Pact counterparts and reinforcement would have been forthcoming from the United States, the disparity along the East-West frontier was nonetheless huge.
Consider the situation today. East Germany no longer exists, while Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and every one of Russia’s other erstwhile Warsaw Pact partners are now members of NATO. So are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which in 1989 were parts of the Soviet Union itself."
