The Russian parliament has approved the suspension of the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. This treaty was a Cold War effort, hammered out after years of negotiations in the 1980s, that limited the size and composition of Russian armed forces in western Russia (and thus able to threaten Western Europe.) The Treaty became moot about a year after it was signed, and is a largely useless relic of the Cold War. But now Russia is threatening to build up combat forces on its Western borders, in response to a government approved conspiracy theory that NATO is planning to eventually invade Russia. Senior Russian officials openly talk about this, and many Russians believe it as well.