The Cold War through the Lens of the
Marshall Plan
Benn Steil, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations has written a very well researched history on the
role of the Marshall Plan as the fulcrum of the Cold War. He previously wrote a
history of the 1944 Bretton Woods monetary conference and that certainly
prepared him to deal with the economic and geopolitical issues facing Europe at
the beginning of the postwar era. He chronicles how the U.S. attitude changed
from plans to deindustrialize Germany and to make the U.N. central to foreign
policy toward rebuilding Germany and making NATO the focus of U.S. policy in
Europe.
The very fact that the U.S. would take
part in both the rebuilding of Europe and entering into peacetime multi-lateral
alliance represented a revolution in U.S. foreign policy. Steil highlights the
role of such key figures as Marshall himself, Harry Truman and George Kennan.
More importantly he brings to light the roles of Republican Senator Arthur
Vandenberg moved the necessary legislation through Congress and Under-Secretary
of State Will Clayton, a former cotton baron, who first articulated the strategic
vision of a united Europe. We also
witness the work of former car executive Paul Hoffman running the day-to-day
operations of the plan along with General Lucius Clay who acted as America’s
proconsul in Germany. He also noted the
important role played by Massachusetts Congressman Christian Herter who led a
congressional fact finding delegation to Europe that was influential in
generating the political support for the plan.
The Marshall Plan was enabled in Europe
by the far sighted leadership of British foreign minister Ernest Bevin and his
French counterpart George Bidault. Here we had a socialist politician working
hand in glove with a center-right one. Most interesting was the fact that
Stalin understood the implications of the Marshall Plan far better than his
western counterpart. He knew that it would divide Europe and that in turn would
make it impossible for him to neutralize a united Germany. Thus it was the
Russian backed coup in Czechoslovakia to prevent that government from
participating in the plan that sealed the fate of Europe. From there it was
quickly realized that aside from economic support, Europe would need military
support. That realization was crystalized by the Berlin Airlift where a
logistics wizard, General William Tunner did the nearly impossible task of
supplying Berlin by air. NATO would come soon thereafter.
Steil does a service in describing the
role of British spies (The Cambridge Five) of informing Stalin of western plans
and the role Soviet mole Henry Dexter White in Treasury in his continued support
of keeping Germany down. We also see Henry Wallace following Stalin’s line in
opposing the Marshall plan in the 1948 presidential race. Although it is not
clear the full role Russia played in the 2016 election, it certainly had a
candidate in Henry Wallace.
Steil goes on to present his views on
the NATO expansion after the Cold War ended in 1991. His take is that the U.S.
was far from being clear-eyed in the 1990s of the implications of moving NATO
east and the effect it would have on the Russians. I don’t think that was
necessary in this book. This topic should be taken up in a future book.
I read Steil’s book with a great deal of
sadness. In the 1940s we had brilliant statesmen who rose to the occasion. Unfortunately our statesman of the past twenty
years or so have been found wanting and this is especially true of the current administration.
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