Here’s a sign that the world has changed since the Cold War: A former Warsaw Pact nation is buying US stealth fighters and the country with the second-largest army in NATO is buying Russian anti-aircraft missiles.

Fifty years ago, the notion that Romania would purchase the latest US-made fighter jet would have laughable in Washington and might have provoked Moscow into sending tanks into the streets of Bucharest.

And who could have imagined in 1973 that Turkey would choose advanced Russian surface-to-air missiles over a chance to buy that US jet, when Turks and Russians fought a dozen wars between the 16th and 20th centuries?

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“It still remains remarkable to me that Romania will now operate the F-35, but Turkey will not,” Aaron Stein, chief content officer at defense news website War on the Rocks, tweeted on April 11. “The S-400 purchase remains inexplicable. Just baffling beyond words.”

Read more: yahoo