The story is wise.
It can have ups and downs in its development, but it always ends up assuming the meaning that best explains and contains it.
Over time, the fundamental, transcendent underlying conditions end up imposing themselves on the conjunctures.
It is the framework in which I interpret the 200 years of bilateral relationship between Argentina and the United States.
The anniversary finds us where we need to be.
And I'm very proud to have worked for that.
Over the course of two centuries, the international scene has changed from the early post-colonial years to the present, including two World Wars and a Cold War.
Our interests have been both competitive and complementary.
The values, at different junctures, have been closer or more distant.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union gave rise to an unprecedented coincidence of these three elements: both the international scenario (whose climate of the time was "The End of History and the Last Man", by Francis Fukuyama), and the will of the United States of expanding the borders of neoliberal values and of Argentina deeply integrating into them, culminated in an almost unrestricted and uncritical alignment of Argentine interests with those of the United States.
Abandoned in Argentina a few years earlier, that neoliberal paradigm was shaken on a global scale by the international economic and financial crisis of 2008. That is when the bilateral relationship began to intertwine with my own experience as Ambassador.
My first term as Ambassador in Washington took place between 2011 and 2013, but it was not the first in the United States, because during the previous 4 and a half years I was the Argentine Representative to the United Nations, in New York.
I was able to witness there how the crisis not only modified the parameters of State intervention in the economy of developed countries, but also, simultaneously, gave rise to the irruption of emerging countries in global governance, among other changes with the elevation of G20 meetings to the level of Heads of State, in November 2008.
After almost doubling its GDP between 2003 and 2011, the Argentine economy began to show weaknesses at the same time that the demand of the vulture funds became more acute, a formidable enemy that had never lost a battle.
Argentina had successfully restructured its debt in two swaps (2005 and 2010) with a reach of 93%, but a group of funds based in the United States had acquired a small percentage of those titles in order to obtain extraordinary profits, via legal proceedings. before a New York court.
In 2012, a judge and an Appeals Court ruled in favor of the claimants.
In a more challenging environment, the United States then maintained an active and decisive internationalism based on its still undisputed role as global hegemonic power.
Our country, which had recovered from the deepest crisis of contemporary times after a decade of thoughtless application of the policies recommended by the so-called "Washington consensus", was dealing with that assertive American position, producing natural and intense strife.
In a few years we had gone from one end of the pendulum to its opposite end.
For a country with the history of Argentina, with the cyclical implications of the weight of foreign debt, the matter was extremely important.
The Argentine debt and the intransigence of the vulture funds thus became the almost exclusive focus of my work in those years, with little room for understanding.
Seven years later, I had the honor of resuming the position of Ambassador of Argentina in Washington, at the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even in this unprecedented context, in the last year of the Republican administration, the change in the atmosphere became palpable: both countries displayed a weedy will of prejudice.
Regarding the scenario and the position of the United States, the strategic competition between two great powers began.
At that moment of self-absorption of the Trump administration, skeptical and far from multilateral forums, there was indeed room for a pragmatic bilateral conversation with Argentina, based on specific interests.
Given the need to restructure the Argentine debt, in 2020 we were able to reach an agreement with private creditors and we began the dialogue with the IMF accompanied by a constructive US position.
Starting in 2021, the bilateral relationship received an additional boost when President Joseph Biden took office.
The United States returned to international forums seeking to recover its leadership in the relationship with partners and allies.
For Argentina, with a consolidated regional leadership and dialogue with governments of different political colors, this meant participating in various plurilateral initiatives at the invitation of President Biden on the main issues of the global global agenda, such as climate change, pandemics, democracy or human rights.
In 2022, we reached an agreement with the IMF with the support of the US government and we carried out multiple bilateral visits of the highest level, through which we were able to expand and deepen cooperation in various areas, including trade and investment, work, health, gender and diversity, nuclear, defense, among others.
Perhaps this moment in the bilateral relationship, with the many affinities and also with differences and nuances, provides us with the appropriate balance of a period in which the willingness for mutual understanding and goodwill is verified, in both countries, both in the government as in the opposition, without the need for alignments that, on the other hand, no one has claimed from us.
We have acquired the ability to talk honestly about what we disagree with and to process our differences.
In short, to paraphrase Borges, to take "the strange decision to be reasonable."
But, especially, we consolidate a deep conviction about the common utility of building trust, since the current challenges challenge the capacity of national democratic systems -and international coordination- to respond to the needs and demands of our societies.
In the fiber of the Argentina-United States relationship there are underlying, transcendent elements that link us, inexorably, from the beginning.
In both lands the conception of independent power was born from below to confront power from above.
That distributed power was designed, instead of concentrated, and it was built deliberative, as opposed to dictatorial.
And, fundamentally, in addition, it was decided that he would reside in the town, without mediation of birthrights, inheritance or titles in perpetuity.
Convergence is thus an inescapable outcome.
The ideas of freedom, equality and progress that gave birth to us as nations are at stake.
History finds us, 200 years later, and beyond the circumstances, walking in the same direction.
Jorge Argüello is Argentine ambassador to the United States