Marshall Plan achieves 60% growth by 1952. Marshall eventually gets the Nobel. Total 14.3B in 1952 $ disbursed. UK 3.2B, France 2.7B, Italy 1.5B, FRG 1.4B. In today’s money, 10x, or about 130B. Or 800B as a fraction of GDP (1.1%). Not counting non-Marshall military aid.
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Loooong wonky chapter on whether the Plan actually worked as advertised and eulogized, including views of revisionists like Alan Milward. Conclusion: it was politically decisive at a unique and fragile time under unique destabilizing forces, but not economically the driver.
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It is silly to view it as a pure economic intervention. It functioned yo prime the pump of recovery and preserve capitalist economies under the shadow of belligerent Stalinism. It had mixed results in creating US style economics, but it bent the arc of history anti-communist.
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All the European recipients reshaped it to their needs using local levers, but it avoided post WWI Dawes plan errors, and arrested the cycle of reparations bankrolled by US aid. And got Germany effect was historic. Overall qualitatively priceless and historic.
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That spherical-cow economists doubt it did anything suggests economics is mostly bullshit. But the fact that it’s unique effects haven’t been replicated in plans inspired by it suggest its defenders misunderstand it too. It was a unique surgery not a general model.
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Ok. Enough for tonight. A bit more left, but will wrap tomorrow.
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Whew done with final chapter on echoes of 1947-52 in 1989-2015. Not going to review in detail since it’s not about Marshall Plan per se. But interesting commentary on why expansion of NATO and EU post-Soviet collapse made all the mistakes Marshall Plan painstakingly avoided.
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The big lesson is that without acknowledging a historical Russian sphere of interest and thoughtlessly expanding NATO and EU with confused democratization goals pursued by a military alliance, is what has led to today.
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Post-Communist weakened Russia has reverted to its historical mean: using Eastern Europe as a buffer to preserve a sense of security wrt to open land border with West that has been vulnerable since Napoleon. NATO expansion under Clinton naively assumed democracy = peace.
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There was no Marshall Plan style economic component from the US and the EU had no interest in such a role wrt Eastern Europe. Way to pay it forward EU. Russia under Putin simply changed tactics to cyber and info war to keep NATO confined. Strategy proved wildly successful.
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wondering if one can counter this without an explicit policy expressing state power is chaos/apathy really a strategy we can put stock in any more?
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