Red Storm Rising

I know clancy is low hanging fruit but this is some great brainworms: the US stumbled into the dominant position in NATO unlike those dastardly Soviets who intentional took the dominant position in the Warsaw Pact which they did because they're evil and not as a natural consequence of having the largest military of the constituents

Also a military alliance having a single mutually intelligible language for effective cohesive communication is Authoritarian