And I think that was basically the end of the idea that this alternative security arrangement

was going to take over because if Germany is not reunified under those auspices,

in the same, I mean, the allegory might be the German situation under NATO,

like Germany rejoins Europe under the auspices of NATO,

and that's the way that that tricky political issue can be managed.

But if Germany's just being reunited in this Western imperialist military alliance

on the European continent, the idea that there's going to be an alternative peaceful solution

between East and West and Europe is not feasible at that point anymore.

So I really think this is pretty much it and the very brief window of hope.

And it was still held on in the OSCE still exists, but I think that basically this

really closed the book on this alternative European security arrangement.

Yeah, I think it's worth mentioning too that Baker's promised to Gorbachev actually

can't, I don't want to say a rip off, but was maybe an homage to something that the West German

Foreign Minister, this guy named Hans Dietrich Genscher, who I think just died recently.

He made this big speech in a touching Germany,

so this became kind of known as the touching formula that NATO wouldn't expand.

And Baker essentially repeated those promises to Gorbachev.

I agree, I think that basically the Americans and the Germans were essentially saying anything

in order for the Red Army troops to leave Eastern Germany.

Anything that happened after that, well, it's like the Russians don't get a say, right?

Like you're out.

And so, we talked about this pretty extensively, I feel like in one of the episodes we did on Ukraine

...