Ronald Asmus was recruited to the Bill Clinton administration State Department in 1997 from the RAND Corporation, where his writing on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion attracted attention. During the next 3 years, he worked to open NATO's door eastward. As Executive Director of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. office in Brussels until his death in April 2011, Asmus opened discussion on the future scope of the Alliance and European Union (EU) in the Balkans and beyond the Black Sea.