At the same time, a bitter policy battle was brewing in Washington over whether America’s interests were best served by pursuing close co-operation with Moscow, with economic assistance to rebuild Russia’s battered economy, or by reaping the rewards of America’s undoubted victory in the Cold War by welcoming the newly liberated eastern European states into the West’s embrace, with membership of institutions such as Nato and the European Union.

Sarotte, as a young student in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall collapsed, had a front-row seat in those momentous times. Now, for this well-written and pacy book, she has uncovered previously unpublished details of former president Bill Clinton’s role in deciding Europe’s fate, especially his raucous encounters with Russia’s constantly inebriated president, Boris Yeltsin. Sarotte explains how relations between Moscow and Washington became so close that Yeltsin at one point even proposed that Russia should “form a close association with Nato”.

Among those on the American side pressing for closer ties was Robert Strauss, US Ambassador to Russia, who, as a child of Jews who had fled Nazi Germany for Texas, always respected how the US had opted to transform former adversaries in Germany “into allies, friends and peaceful competitors”, and argued that a similar approach should be taken to post-Soviet Russia.

Ultimately, though, this altruistic approach foundered – partly thanks to the unreliability of the Yeltsin administration. At one point Yeltsin, on a visit to Washington to discuss vital arms-control issues, was found wandering down Pennsylvania Avenue in his underwear, in a state of high intoxication, in search of a pizza.

But just as important was the desire of newly liberated nations like Poland to keep themselves free from Moscow’s malign interference. Lech Wałęsa, veteran leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement, was especially dismissive of American attempts to reach an accommodation with Moscow that did not include Nato enlargement. “Let the Russian generals get upset,” he told the Americans in 1993. “They won’t launch a nuclear war.”

Thus, far from ending the Cold War, the architects of Nato’s European expansion merely sowed the seeds of a new confrontation between Russia and the West.

Not One Inch by ME Sarotte is published by Yale at £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books