The chapter opens with the diplomacy leading to 1990 German unification, largely on Western terms. It shows that unification arrangements contained no provisions blocking NATO’s subsequent eastward expansion. It covers Boris Yeltsin’s march to political power in Russia and the conflict between him and Gorbachev over the future of reform and the USSR itself; Gorbachev’s failure to adopt the last-ditch Five Hundred Days economic reform plan; Gorbachev’s flirtation with force to suppress Baltic separatism; his efforts to negotiate a new Union Treaty with republican leaders to restructure the USSR. On the international scene, it describes the 1991 G7 summit in London, where Gorbachev vainly sought Western economic assistance to preserve his crumbling position. It concludes with the 1991 US-Soviet summit in Moscow, including the signing of the START I nuclear arms treaty and President Bush’s visit to Kiev.