The U.S. is forcing a Ronald Reagan statue on Berlin

Berlin is getting a present it never wanted and definitely can't regift.

For years, the German city has rejected U.S. pressure to put up a statue of former President Ronald Reagan, commemorating his famous call for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." So the U.S. took matters into its own hands and put up a statue itself, albeit inside the ironically fenced-in land belonging to the American embassy there, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Berlin Wall divided the city for 24 years before Reagan publicly told Gorbachev to tear it down, and stood another two years after that until he actually did. Yet it took even longer for the U.S. to find a way to commemorate Reagan in a country he never ran. Friday marks 30 years since the Berlin Wall came down, and that's when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will hold a formal inauguration for its new overseas Reagan statue, per the Journal.

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The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation commissioned the 7-foot-tall statue, which is "partially visible" from the street, the Journal writes. The bronze ex-president peeks over grassy hedges on the embassy's terrace, looking down at the spot near the Brandenburg Gate where Reagan gave his speech. There are notecards in Reagan's metallic hand reading "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," as if he could've forgotten those iconic words.

Efforts to build a Reagan statue ramped up in 2011 under then-President Barack Obama, but never came through. Read more about that process at The Wall Street Journal.