Lol, the Europeans consider angling for the $$ without strings attached by hiring an American PR firm to make a style-over-substance pitch. State department scuttles that. Can’t bullshit the greatest bullshitter nation. The US means to exercise real control.
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This provokes a key question perhaps the book will answer: who was the principal, who was the agent in the end? Who suckered whom? Did the US but cheap control of Europe? Or did Europe get cheap US aid with cosmetic concessions?
I think the answer will be “yes”
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Extremely complicated tactical mid-game going on. Amounts to Uncle Sam yelling “get jobs!” at 16 kids while grudgingly allowing UBI. Kids trying to stay in their room demanding a higher allowance and avoiding getting a job. Sovereign laziness vs collective industriousness.
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This book is fundamentally changing my view of what the Marshall Plan was. It was a UBI experiment for unemployed countries that didn’t like sharing, and hated their rich uncle who’d just bailed them out militarily.
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Deal finally done, after eleventh hour accommodations of European constraints and lots of pretty words to create good optics for all. It was a face-saving packaging of a mess that was just good enough to get funding going.
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The US relaxes its demands recognizing that a war-exhausted Europe did not have the political capacity to act with the kind of decisive boldness needed. So plan gets pointed roughly right and unleashed. A punt basically.
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Elsewhere in parallel GATT happens. 23 nations. Unclear what the relationship to Marshall Plan was but same principals drove both. Clayton in particular.
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And of course GATT became WTO which Trump regime is now trying to destroy.
Liberal international order that began with Marshall Plan and GATT is now under wrecking ball attack by the country that built it.
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For context: Trump wants to rewind global trade to pre-WWI pre-industrial state. Not in a historic sense but by reaching for a vague aesthetic of bilateral kiss-ass global loyaltynomics. Others like Navarro are compiling his garish tastes into actual reactionary wrecking plan.
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Europe would not achieve the kind of free trade and economic integration envisioned by the plan till 1968.
But the Paris conference did expand minds to the possibility, and create a core group of political leaders interested in Europe as a whole and trust to pursue it.
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Chapter concludes with a view from the Soviet side: a hostile Kremlin analysis of the plan as American imperialism. Now it has to get through Congress.
The truth of the plan was somewhere between view from American and Soviet oiptics, plus strong Hanlon’s razor.
Replying to
Chapter 7.
“On Sept 17, 1947, Andrei Vyshinsky delivered an angry ninety-two minute indictment of the Marshall Plan before the United Nations General Assembly”
He was the “star prosecutor of the late 1930s Moscow show trials”
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‘But what truly bothered the State Department, James Reston observed, was not...Russian charges...but the feeling that the United States was intervening “just enough to be blamed for it and not enough to be effective at it.”’
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Stalin blindsided by unilateralism of Marshall plan. He expected to continue talks on Germany. Calls his own conference of communist parties under Zhdanov. Whips French and Italian communist parties into line but that costs them political cred at home
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Zhdanov was apparently sort of the Soviet Kennan.
Must have been tough selling what was basically a recovery sabotage plan and revolutionary loyalty test as a meaningful response to the Marshall Plan. Communism was already a bankrupt idea by 1947.
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Funny how the Soviets analyzed and critiques the US actions pretty much correctly, yet were unable to do anything with their narrative.
Moral: It’s not sufficient to hate-read between the lines of your opponents’ story correctly. You also have to tell a better story yourself.
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The 22-23 September meeting was meant to launch Cominform, Moscow’s anti-Marshall-plan organization. I had no idea they did this thing.
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The Soviets read the US so clearly partly because of spies, but also because they’d tried the same thing earlier with something called Comintern which led to Moscow being accused of interfering in other countries. Imperialist recognize imperialism
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Stalin gives up on non-revolutionary methods and instructs communist parties in the West to destabilize the plan by any means, returning to ore-war revolutionary models. Tries to bring all in line. In the East, no more tolerance for non-communist coalition partners. Purity time.
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Yugoslavia under Tito resists Stalin but he doesn’t invade because Soviets aren’t strong enough to directly provoke the US.
Kinda interesting that the ideologically pure, global superpower that became familiar later did not take shape till 1949, 30y after 1919.
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Italy and France erupt into communist-backed unrest against Marshall Plan.
Damn I had no idea the Soviets instigated such direct resistance to the plan. I was under the impression it was an uncontested, peaceful aid drop.
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The tactics set back recovery in both countries and turn sentiments against communists. Both countries swing right electorally in response.
...and this is why I’m a huge skeptic of the Bernie crowd. Strong rhymes here.
Communists and socialists have learned nothing in 70 years.
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1950 vs 2020
- No Soviets but Putin trying same Stalinist tricks for same reasons
- China belt-road-initiative looks more Marshall Plan than anything the US is doing
- The US is larping 1830s Jacksonian version of itself
- As usual under inequality stress West swings fascist
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Plot shifts to DC. Truman now has to use Red Scare and threat of all Europe going communist if US aid doesn’t materialize before winter privations to persuade Congress.
Both parties are reluctant. Republicans more so. Narrative trotted out of Europeans just not working hard.
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To recap: Truman doctrine and early aid to UK was explicitly anti-communist. Marshall Plan pulled punches and pretended to be about humanitarian aid. Stalin called bullshitbon that. Now it’s back to explicit anti-communism optics. This is how we get to NATO I guess.
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1946 US loan to the UK appears to have been a big deal in this story. It forced £ convertibility to $ for UK war loans from colonies incl. India. Destroyed empire and led Marshall Plan to be more generous grants rather than loans. Finally paid off in 2006!
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“Truman’s challenge was to convince many more Republicans [besides Vanderburg] that the Marshall Plan was the answer to communism, rather than being communism itself”
The plan smelled of FDR’s WPA to many Congress. Truman had to red-scarify it to sell it.
Birth of McCarthyism?
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Holy crap. Between August - November 1947, >200 Congressmen went to tour Europe to get the facts first-hand. They went without wives or luxuries. Can’t imagine such diligence today.
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The Republicans came back convinced and converted.
‘This was a pleasssnt shock to the White House, which had been “afraid the traveling Congressnen would merely gather information to support their own prejudices.”’
Much impress. Working politics. So Amaze.
GIF
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“the great difficulty here is not so much the physical destruction of the war, but the fact that the communists have chosen this country as the scene of one of their most clever and well-financed operations against the forces of democracy.” — Nixon touring Italy as freshman 🤯
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This thing is like the Silmarrilon to today’s LOTR. The contours of everything are being laid down. Will Richard Gollum Nixon find the One Ring in a Capitol Hill bathroom while the Marshall Plan is being voted on?
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Herter committee 883-page report basically lays out Red Scare case for the plan. On Vandenberg’s advice Truman appoints 3 bipartisan committtees. Harriman being the big one. The reports fuel top secret Kremlin report on the plan.
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Richard Bissell, executive secretary to Harriman, pulled all-nighters to get the Harriman Report together in time. Later had CIA career running U2 program, Bay of Pigs, etc. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M.
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Month after it was released 2/3 of Americans had heard of the plan and 56% approved of it. Damn!
Hard to remember a time when the US was willing to endure domestic hardship to help out the world. And this was before post-war boom. 1946 US economy was down 11%.
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Though, it was explicitly fellow feeling for Europe at the time, not Peace Corps style global altruism
“...the nations by whose citizens our land was settled and in whose tradition our civilization is rooted.” — Henry Stimson Marshall Plan PR piece in foreign affairs.
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There was a huge PR effort to sell the plan, including private and lobbying efforts. Brookings and CFR did their thing. Stimson’s article in FP became rallying flag. He became chair of the Marshall a Plan committee
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AFL-CIO supported it, as did all business/trade associations. Christian leaders loved it. Everybody loved the plan.
There was grassroots efforts to encourage Americans to accept austerities. Women were encouraged to cook with leftovers (ugh 1950s jello dishes explained?)
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The South wants a Marshall Plan for the South. ASPCA wants one for animals. Who doesn’t like free money plans 😂
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Alright. To bed. We continue tomorrow.
Homework: design your own Covid Marshall plan. Use arduinos and 3d printers if possible. Link it to a China scare so we can sell it better.
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Getting started early today since there's a heat wave on in LA and don't feel like doing much else.
Now at four-power meeting on Germany, in London, November 1947. Writing on the wall, the talks are dead on arrival. Everyone knows the West has already forked away from Potsdam.
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Talks fail as expected. Stage set for partition of Germany and unique problem of Berlin 120 miles east of border. As expected Soviets make moves to nullify the four-party control of the city following failure of the talks. This would be exciting if I didn't already know ending.
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