The Marshall Plan & America\u2019s Coming of Age as a Superpower<\/em>.<\/p>\nFolks, I had in mind to write a super-interesting post on how the Marshall Plan was an occurrence that was, if not nonrepeatable, than very nearly so, in push-back to the multiple pundits and politicians claiming the solution to whatever problem they have in front of them is a New Marshall Plan (for poor urban areas, for Central America, etc.) \u2014 or, alternatively, a \u201cmoon shot.\u201d\u00a0 But, as it turns out, the book is overdue at the library so I\u2019ll have to content myself with a few key items I learned.<\/p>\n
In the first place, the Marshall Plan was implemented in a context in which Americans fretted not merely about whether reconstruction was proceeding apace but whether Europeans would have enough food to eat.\u00a0 Germans in the American and British sectors (where they were relatively better off) \u201cwere living on just 1,550 calories a day, 60 percent of which came from potatoes and bread\u201d (p. 90).\u00a0 Similar statistics held true for France, Britain and elsewhere.\u00a0 There was inadequate electricity to light homes, inadequate coal to heat them, raw materials were missing to operate factories.\u00a0 Germans were struggling to repair their buildings to provide adequate housing, with families in rebuilt buildings allocated 50 square meters per family (about 500 square feet).\u00a0 And Marshall and others knew it would cost a large sum of money, and that this would come from Americans\u2019 pocketbooks (10% of all federal spending in its first year, p. 168), and he directly sought public support (also benefitting from the goodwill he had from the public for his role in the war); it was also important in this respect that Americans as private individuals made their own charitable contributions to European relieve \u2014 $789 million in 1946 alone, plus the original CARE packages.<\/p>\n
The second striking element Mills describes is the fact that the Marshall Plan was not merely the United States shoveling aid money (or coal or flour) at the Europeans.\u00a0 There was an explicit requirement \u2014 the genesis of the EU \u2014 that the recipient countries use the money in a coordinated, planned way, and not just each country making plans for its share of the aid money, but that all countries, together, plan its use, with the objective of ensuring a new economic cooperation among these countries.\u00a0 Proposals for \u201cnew Marshall Plans\u201d almost entirely envision the plan as consisting solely of money-shoveling, but this second element was crucial.\u00a0 And at this point in time, each of the governments in question was deemed up to the task (though with Germany still having its American occupying force); American \u201cexperts\u201d or the postwar equivalent of NGOs were not running the show, except insofar as they made this crucial demand of regional cooperation.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Time to take the book back.<\/p>\n
Could the United States ship literal boatloads of money to Central America?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 Are there appropriate local governance structures in place?\u00a0 Not according to the promoters of this proposal. \u00a0Would it make a difference?\u00a0 Maybe, maybe not.\u00a0 But the success of the Marshall Plan in no way indicates whether or not any similar money-shoveling, under wholly-different circumstances, would have the desired effect.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subtitled The Marshall Plan & America\u2019s Coming of Age as a Superpower. Folks, I had in mind to write a super-interesting post on how the Marshall Plan was an occurrence that was, if not nonrepeatable, than very nearly so, in push-back to the multiple pundits and politicians claiming the solution to whatever problem they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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