Sixty Years Later: Revisiting the Marshall Plan
James P. Cain, U.S. Ambassador
Jyllands-Posten June 5, 2007
On June 5, 1947, speaking to the graduating class at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall laid the foundation for an American program of assistance to the countries of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Marshall Plan.
The vision he advanced was a stroke of political genius that built upon the shared ideals of the United States and Europe. But at the time, nobody knew if it would work.
We may not think about it much today, but in 1947 Europe was completely exhausted. Many of its great cities were in ruins. The whole continent was in a deep economic depression that threatened its democratic traditions, a threat made all the more real by Stalin's relentless subversion of one central European country after another.
Only five years later, all of that changed when economic assistance worth $13 billion (almost $100 billion in today's terms) poured into Europe. Winston Churchill called the U.S. aid program "the most unsordid act in history."
A Marshall Plan agreement between Denmark and the United States was signed on June 29, 1948, by Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen and my predecessor Ambassador Josiah Marvel, Jr. As a result, Denmark benefited from economic assistance worth $278 million.
The Marshall Plan was not charity. George Marshall made it clear that a speedy European recovery was in America's interest. A precondition was that the Europeans establish a regional authority that could speak for Europe with a single voice. Europe responded quickly through the establishment of what later became the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD.
The success of the Marshall Plan rested on a simple yet sweeping concept, that America and Europe share a common destiny, and that unless we go forward together, we are unlikely to go forward at all. That concept was self-evident to Europeans and Americans of Marshall's generation, whose experience was forged by decades of common struggle in war and depression.
Sixty years later, there is a new world to shape. Nobody in 1947 could have imagined the terrorist threat and the effect it would have on a world that survived the Cold War. The challenges that we face today are no less crucial than the ones we faced in 1947.
Our memories of the shared struggle against German and Soviet totalitarianism have faded. For today's young people, they are ancient history. The concept that guided the Marshall Plan, however, is as valid today as it was in the immediate postwar years. Transatlantic cooperation must form the basis of the U.S.-European relationship.
When the Marshall Plan was launched nobody could have predicted the enormous success this bold vision would enjoy. What statesmen like Marshall, Churchill and Truman hoped for in 1947 was that Europe would resist the effects of the twin totalitarianisms, one which started a world war that wrought unparalleled destruction and the other that threatened Europe's political and economic well being. This was what the postwar statesmen hoped for, but they could not guarantee it. The only thing they could guarantee was that there was no reasonable prospect for success if America and Europe did not act together.
We face a different set of challenges today: international terrorism; achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East; climate change; and diseases like HIV/AIDS that threaten millions. Foreign policy is always a work in progress. We will not know the full results of our efforts until years, perhaps even decades, later. All we can be sure of is that Europe and the United States must confront today's challenges together. Sixty years after General Marshall's famous speech, Europe and the U.S. are still indispensable partners.