The script for this episode was written by Owen Flanagan.

Owen is a loyal listener of our podcast, and we reached out to him to see if he was interested

in writing this script. He is very fascinated by President George H.W. Bush, and originally

in our Cold War series, we were thinking that we should end with President Reagan

because he is the president that is so often considered the president who guided America at the end of

the Cold War. And while that is true to a certain extent, history does show that it was

President George H.W. Bush who presided over the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union.

And Owen brings a wealth of knowledge and information about that part of American history and world history.

And so we are very pleased to present to you this episode about what happened during those critical years.

And when we asked Owen to write about this, we are thinking mainly about President Bush's policies

and his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev.

And as we researched it further, it became very clear that the

decisions that were made during that time are decisions that profoundly impact the world that we

have today, especially with respect to German reunification and the expansion of NATO,

Germany going into NATO at that time, things that

were not necessarily for ordained, and decisions that President Bush specifically made,

and decisions that are being talked about front and center right now in the situation in Ukraine after Russia

has invaded the nation of Ukraine and many people often cite NATO expansion as one of the

major reasons for why that has happened.

And so in this episode, we talk about how that happened, what President George H.W.

Bush's role was in that, as well as Soviet

leader Mikhail Gorbachev. And at the time, we didn't know that those issues would be front

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