In return for agreeing to German unification, Baker offered Gorbachev “ironclad guarantees that there would be no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction for forces of Nato one inch to the east,” according to recently declassified transcript of the meeting. As per the records, Baker reiterated that promise at least three times during the course of that meeting.

Baker was following on the same position of his then West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who insisted in a speech on January 31 1990, less than 10 days before Baker’s Moscow visit, that there “would not be an expansion of Nato territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”