U.S. Department of State Fiscal Year 2020 Agency Financial Report

American Moral Leadership: Advancing Unalienable Rights Abroad in Furtherance of U.S. Interests F ollowing World War II, the United States took the lead in constructing an international order that reflected the commitments to freedom at the core of American consti- tutional government. With Europe’s infrastructure in ruins, Congress adopted the Marshall Plan in 1948, a massive program of economic aid aimed at restoring “conditions abroad in which free institutions can survive.” Explaining the need for such a program in his 1947 commencement speech at Harvard University, Secretary of State George Marshall said it was only “logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Increased emphasis on human rights continued in the Reagan administration. Natan Sharansky wrote movingly of how the Russian translation of Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “evil empire” speech came to him and other jailed Soviet dissidents as a ray of hope in the darkness of their six- foot cells. “[T]he clear moral position of the West,” he said, meant that there could “be no more illusions about the nature of the Soviet Union….” The prisoners, using the secret means they had to communicate, “knocked from one cell to another by Morse [code]”; they “talk[ed] through toilets to say to one another the great day” had arrived. President Reagan in June 1987 delivered a speech in Berlin during which he directly challenged Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” These strong words were backed up by years of fortifying American military capabilities and constructively working toward strategic arms reductions with the Soviets. Late in 1989, citizens of Germany tore down the Berlin Wall and for the first time in nearly three decades could move freely from East to West. The reunification of Germany followed the next year, and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. President Reagan speaks in front of the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, in Federal Republic of Germany, June 12, 1987. National Archives 2020 A gency F inanci al R eport U ni ted S tates D epartment of S tate | 109