For many Latin American states, expropriation has been a hammer in the toolbox of land or labor reform. For the United States, expropriation has been a thorn in the side of its companies’ profitable operations in the region—and, therefore, a threat to its interests.

This conflict has played out many times throughout the region. In 1938, the Mexican government expropriated the oil industry under Article 27, which specified the state owned all natural resources; the Roosevelt administration responded with a boycott of Mexican products. In 1952, Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz enacted Decree 900, which expropriated the land that the United Fruit Company (UFC) had laid fallow; the Eisenhower administration, with close ties to the UFC, overthrew the Árbenz government two years later. And in 1962, the Cuban government expropriated substantial U.S. landholdings, compensated at the declared tax value of the property. However, U.S. companies, who had artificially lowered prices to pay fewer taxes, cried foul that the Cuban government would not pay them the fair market price for their property. As a result, Congress passed the Hickenlooper Amendment to withhold U.S. aid from countries that expropriated U.S. property “without just compensation” the same year.

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September 11, 2001 marked one of the worst ever terror attacks on American soil. Two hijacked planes crashed into and destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, one crashed into the Pentagon, and one crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, 8,900 were injured, and thousands more were left traumatized after experiencing the attack.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have also significantly affected U.S. foreign and domestic policy by increasing security and surveillance measures and fueling ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attacks also led President George W. Bush to create the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, which remains active today working to protect United States civilians and combat domestic terrorism.

Career Foreign Service Officer Mary Ryan served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs during the attacks on September 11, 2001. In Congressional testimony, she told how the terrorists who committed the attacks had received legitimate U.S. visas, and described how difficulties and limitations in background checking and interviewing made the visa adjudication process inaccurate. Ultimately, Ryan believed that it was important for other parts of the U.S. government to share its intelligence with consular offices to ensure that they issued visas responsibly and prevented future terrorists from entering the country. Without such coordination, consular officers would not have real-time information that could empower them to prevent potential terrorists from acquiring visas. Despite the lack of information, inter-agency cooperation, and similar circumstances for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) borger agents who actually admitted the terrorists into the United States, Mary Ryan and other front-line consular officers received a lot of criticism and even blame for what happened.

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They were doctors, professors, and, in some cases, even peasants. The one thing they all had in common, however, was the desire to flee communist Romania for America and being “just miserable” because of it. Thanks to the efforts of two people at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, “The Miserables” found a voice in the U.S. government.

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu had little tolerance for dissent. So when thousands of desperate Romanians committed the “crime” of wanting to become American citizens, Ceaușescu cracked down. He had them fired from their jobs, revoked their benefits, and all but stripped them of their Romanian citizenship. Despite their pleas for help, the U.S. embassy declared that these asylum seekers did not qualify as refugees, since Ceaușescu’s assault on them was “not politically motivated.”

Virginia “Ginny” Young, the Consul General, personally took on their case. She lobbied the front office again and again over the years but they rejected her every time. Sometimes she was called “too emotionally attached;” at other times, she was rejected because a senior official’s reputation was at stake in preserving our relationship with President Ceaușescu. Finally, in 1989, she took the issue all the way up to the new U.S. ambassador, Allen “Punch” Green.

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For women in the 1990s, Kenya was a difficult place to live. For those who came from wealthier families and could afford education, they sometimes had the resources to do great things, from simply living independently to even winning the Nobel Peace Prize as Wangari Mathai did in 2004. Unfortunately, however, poverty, lack of resources, and patriarchal laws and societal structures often prevented many women from becoming educated and achieving their full potential.

Women were expected to marry early to start a family, and families often couldn’t afford to send girls to school. Even for those who were educated, it was difficult to find jobs, and this contributed to violence, robbery, and other crime. In 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action and subsequent introduction of feminist thought into Kenya began to improve women’s conditions, but they still had a long way to go. More girls began going to school and women’s education improved, but there was still a huge disparity between the wealthy and poorer classes. Even today, women have few rights to property ownership in Kenya and are often even banned from inheriting their husbands’ assets because of their gender.

In this “moment” in U.S. diplomatic history, Joanne Grady Huskey discusses her experiences volunteering as the head of the American Women’s Association in Kenya from 1996 to 1999 while her husband, a Foreign Service officer, was posted there. From working with Kenyan women to build a hospital and then having it taken away by the government, to even meeting a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Huskey experienced many interesting and diverse things during her time working in Kenya related to poverty and the fight for women’s rights.

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Following the 1990–1991 Gulf War, the United Nations wanted to prevent any further aggression, and feared that Iraq had developed nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world could only imagine the level of mass destruction and carnage that would result if Iraq decided to use such weapons.

As a result, the United Nations developed a Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect Iraq’s arsenal of weapons and to ensure that Iraq complied with the regulations and guidelines pertaining to weapons of mass destruction. The international community largely considered Iraq to be responsible for the start of the Gulf War due to its invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. As such, UNSCOM required Iraq to recognize Kuwait as an independent country and pay war reparations. It also gave the United Nations extensive insight into and supervision over Iraq’s military structures and production.

During the investigation, the Commission discovered that Iraq had indeed created weapons of mass destruction as early as the 1980s. While Iraq initially complied with the UNSCOM mandates, there was some minor conflict between UNSCOM investigators and the Iraqi military. At one point in 1991, the Iraqi military fired warning shots at the investigators to prevent them from searching vehicles that were believed to contain contraband weapons. Iraq subsequently admitted to developing nuclear weapons for defensive purposes only and complied with the UN’s rules by destroying a large part of its nuclear arsenal in the summer of 1991. Amid suspicions that the United States was using the Commision to spy on the Iraqi military and Saddam Hussein, rather than to actually fulfill its original goals, UNSCOM ended its special investigation in 1998, and was replaced by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Committee (UNMOVIC). Iraq ultimately agreed unconditionally to the searches by UNMOVIC in 2002, and the investigation ended altogether in 2005.

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At the end of World War II, Argentina was entrenched in debt and on the verge of defaulting to its creditors in Europe. However, in voicing its concerns to France, Argentina was able to secure a three-day meeting in Paris that would allow its debt to be restructured along a more reasonable timeline; this was the inception of the Paris Club.

The international body has since assisted nations in every part of the world in developing a more sustainable debt plan with their creditors.

Since then, the Paris Club has evolved to provide measures of debt relief and forgive portions of a country’s loan; in 1991 the capacity for a country’s debt cancellation rose to 50 percent, with the poorest countries’ development assistance debt later having the potential to be reduced by up to 90 percent. Countries receiving assistance from the Paris Club are required to have an International Monetary Fund program; and in working closely with the IMF, the Paris Club is able to glean an accurate picture of what challenges a country is facing in repaying its debt.

In the early nineties, the Paris Club dealt with manifold issues, particularly those regarding the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union—which independent states would assume the USSR’s previous debts? Also in this period, the Paris Club forgave half of Poland’s $33 billion debt, which at the time was regarded as the most generous relief policy the group had ever developed.

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To directly defy orders from one’s superiors undoubtedly takes nerve and, above all, conviction and belief in doing the right thing. In an organization like the Foreign Service, where each individual takes part in representing an entire country, such a dynamic is only amplified.

The bureaucracy of the State Department creates a concrete hierarchy. Yet, the content of life in politics is such that policy decisions made by few directly affect the lives of many.

For F. Allen “Tex” Harris, a posting in Buenos Aires, Argentina marked the beginning of two years of defiance in favor of protecting the innocent people of the country from an insidious regime at a time when the Argentine government routinely organized the “disappearance” of any dissidents. Tex Harris, to the chagrin of his superiors, began in depth investigations into these disappearances and deeper manifestations of corruption and wrong-doing by the Argentine government, putting on the line his own fledgling career in the Foreign Service as a Political Officer.

The tension between Harris and the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires came to a head with the discovery of a file on the planned Yacyretá Dam project, a hydroelectric dam to be constructed between several South American countries with EXIM [Export-Import Bank of the United States] financing for the involvement of an American company. However, Harris quickly noted something unusual about the Argentine manufacturer listed in the file he had borrowed. It had deep connections to the government regime, information that had not been shared with Washington.

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Madhumita Gupta had a long and successful career serving as a Foreign Service National with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Her background and upbringing played a key role in making her the person she became. She grew up in a household that was constantly brimming with knowledge.

Her father was proficient in economics and government, which led to the family moving around a lot and thus exposing Gupta to many new and different situations. Gupta’s father also had some high-profile friends, such as Dr. Kenneth Arrow, Dr. Amartya Sen, and Professor Leontief—all of whom are Nobel prize laureates. As a young woman experiencing this during her formative years, Gupta was always learning new things and this segued perfectly into her professional life. As a career Foreign Service National with USAID, she worked in many different sectors and places, with her determination and drive always pushing her towards success. All of this came together to create a unique, successful, and impactful career.

Madhumita Gupta’s father taught her many things, but it was her own discipline and drive that led to her success. She wanted to be an economist, like her father, and she notes that although he was supportive he tried to dissuade her—most likely because “he knew the frustrations of being an economist.” She pursued this interest, studied economics at American University, and received her Masters in Business Administration from George Washington University. However similar their passions, Gupta worked tirelessly and achieved everything she did on her own merit; her father always taught her to be “self-taught and self-made” and did not want his position as a well-known economist to be the reason she was able to get positions. This gave Gupta the ambition to work hard, and stands as a true testament to the idea that working hard can lead to great rewards.

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Almost two years ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sold the first ticket to the moon. A few months later, on January 3, 2019, a Chinese spacecraft named Chang’e 4 became the first robotic mission to land on the far side of the moon. Since then, both an Israeli ship and an Indian mission have attempted a lunar landing.

The United States and Russia have long been competing for the advantage in space technology, and now other nations have joined the so-called Space Race.

In this “Moment in U.S. Diplomatic History,” we look back to arguably the most important moment in space exploration. When Apollo 11 finally landed humans on the moon, a sense of euphoria spread across the globe. Neil Armstrong’s now famous words, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” meant that America had achieved something previously thought to be impossible.

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The United States’ war on Communism has crucially shaped much of our foreign policy today. Since the First Red Scare roughly a century ago, we have passed laws, fought wars, and set up international institutions—all in the name of preventing its proliferation. Whether we succeeded is a different story.

In the context of the Cold War, certain advocates will lionize the ultimate defeat of the Soviet Union as an embodiment of a U.S. ideological victory, which in turn established our country as the leader of—at least until recently—a unipolar international system. However, we cannot deny that the U.S. failed to achieve this goal in other respects, whether it be militarily, politically, or economically.

John T. Fishburn is one particular individual who witnessed firsthand the challenges and insufficiencies of American efforts on this ideological front. Throughout his time in South America, communist leaders always seemed to be present to stymie his efforts of extending U.S. relations. During his first assignment abroad to Argentina as a Labor Officer, the 1943 coup and Juan Perón’s subsequent appointment as Labor Minister restricted explicitly free democracy, in turn precipitating his transfer to Montevideo, Uruguay. Similarly in Brazil many years later, Fishburn found his role as a Labor Attaché frustrated by governmental collaborations with the communist party.

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