The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

50 SEPTEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Union dominated Mongolia. Domestic political decisions in Ulaanbaatar were always made with an eye toward Moscow’s interests. In the 1930s Stalin’s purges were mirrored in Mongolia with the execution of potential opponents and attacks on non- socialist traditional culture. After 1960 the Soviet Union under- wrote the bulk of the country’s economic development. The United States expressed episodic interest in normal- izing relations with the Central Asian state, only to be foiled by resistance from U.S. allies in Taipei and foes in Moscow. In the early years of the Cold War, American interest in Mongolia was driven mainly by a desire to improve intelligence collection on the Soviet Union. In the 1960s two Foreign Service officers, J. Stapleton Roy and Curtis Kamman, were assigned to the Univer- sity of Washington in Seattle to learn Mongolian in anticipation of opening a U.S. embassy. That effort did not succeed, at least partially due to objections from Chiang Kai-Shek in Taipei, whom the U.S. still recognized as the legitimate leader of China. In 1972 the U.S. undertook another effort, sending FSOs William Brown and Allyn Nathan- son to study Mongolian at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. This initiative failed largely due to the Soviets, who objected and, according to the former first deputy foreign minis- ter of Mongolia, D. Yondon, waylaid a message from Ulaanbaatar to the Mongolian negotiators. A Foundation of Debt and Foreign Assistance From the outside, looking at official statistics and figures, the Mongolian economy in the 1980s appeared strong, a model of the benefits of the Soviet-style command economy. Yet there were systematic challenges that the government in Ulaanbaatar remained unable to address. As with many communist econo- mies, Mongolia operated under a five-year plan. However, unlike most of its fellows in the communist world, 60 per- cent or more of the investment in those five-year plans was financed through foreign loans (primar- ily from the USSR and the German Democratic Republic). Thus Mongolia accrued massive amounts of foreign debt to sustain the image of a successful workers’ paradise. In 1990 the Department of State estimated that Soviet aid to Mongolia had totaled $800 million to $1 billion annually, an excessive amount when you consider that the entire popula- tion of Mongolia numbered only 2 million at the time. By 1987 even the Mongolian leadership had begun to express private reservations that this level of debt was unsustainable. Even at that unsustainable level it was not possible to meet the demands of a growing and increasingly urbanized population; the country experienced ongoing short- ages of foodstuffs, consumer goods and housing. Though Mongolia had been firmly entrenched in Moscow’s orbit since the 1920s, those close ties were now threatening its stability. As internal challenges with infrastructure were coming to a head, the situation was also affected by Mikhail Gorbachev’s shake-up of the Soviet Union. Mongolia was now experiencing the ripples of glasnost and perestroika. Given Moscow’s history of opposing Mongolian contact with the United States, it was a shock to the Mongolian leadership when, during a January 1986 visit to Ulaanbaatar, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze raised the question of Mongolia establishing relations with the United States. He said the Polit- buro of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had reached the conclusion that opening such a dialogue would be in “our common interests.” The Reagan administration was unsure how to proceed; some senior officials were pleased with the change, and others opposed it. Enter the United States U.S. interest in Mongolia, meanwhile, was limited at best. Washington’s understanding of Mongolia was summed up in a declassified October 1984 CIA analysis: “Mongolia’s isola- tion and the limited Western presence there make it difficult to interpret Mongolian politics.” In the mid-1980s, senior officials in the U.S. government began to reach out to Mongolia through the embassy in Tokyo. There is confusion about what happened, and this is the focus of ongoing research by the authors. Mongolian observers speak of an American approach made through the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in January 1986, which the Mongo- Joseph E. Lake and his wife, Jo Ann Kessler Lake, leave Beijing on the Mongolian branch of the Trans-Siberian railway for Ulaanbaatar in July 1990. COURTESYOFJOELAKE