When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the US was involved in efforts to reunify Germany.

And American officials were trying to guess what the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,

might want in order to withdraw his control from East Germany.

There's a guess that maybe what Gorbachev will want in exchange for letting Germany

unify is a promise that NATO and not expand his work.

Mary Serradi is a historian who wrote a book about these negotiations called Not One Inch.

That title comes from an offer that US Secretary of State James Baker allegedly floated.

See, at the time NATO only included the US, Canada, and some of its closest European allies.

And so Secretary of State Baker, in a speculative way, in an early stage in negotiation says

to Gorbachev, well, how about this idea?

How about you let your half of Germany go, and we agree NATO moves not one in Eastward?

Well, Serradi says President George H. W. Bush rejected that idea.

In Russia eventually agreed to the treaty, it did not include a ban on NATO expansion.

But there's residual bitterness, because of course afterwards, still to this day, Putin

is saying, look, there was this other offer on the table.

That's sort of factually accurate in a narrow sense, but it doesn't reflect the reality

of the retreating.

NATO committed to an open-door policy that any country in Europe could join.

And the alliance did expand East.

This let the US cement its influence in Europe, and it gave former Soviet republics like

Bulgaria and Romania strong partners.

They believed that the United States could bring them into the West, which was what they wanted.

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