The Marshall Plan turns 60

by William Neikirk

Gen. George Marshall, one of the heroes of World War II, stepped to the podium at Harvard University on this day 60 years ago to propose a European recovery plan from World War II. And thus began the Marshall Plan, one of the greatest foreign-policy achievements in U.S. history.

Marshall, then secretary of state, told Harvard's graduating class that day that without America's monetary help, European would face "economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character." Not only was the continent devastated by war, but its people faced hunger and poverty. It also appeared vulnerable to the spread of communism.

Since then, politicians have shown their love of the phrase "Marshall Plan." They have proposed domestic Marshall Plans and international Marshall Plans. It has come to mean a big, single-minded effort with lots of bucks to tackle a big problem. But Marshall Plans are hard to put together. And the conditions must be right. Iraq might not be a good candidate.

Now, 60 years later, our foreign aid programs appear to be anything but Marshall Plans. There is "enormous fragmentation" in our aid programs, said Lael Brainard, an economist at the Brookings Institution. She came up with what she called the "chart from hell" recently, and it showed that our aid programs have 50 different objectives with 50 offices implementing them.

It's not that these programs are bad; it's that they are entangled in bureaucracy and lack strategic focus, she says. They include everything from fighting AIDs to promoting good governance to nuclear nonproliferation to disaster relief to fighting drugs to religious freedom to labor reform. A reorganization is needed, she said, a shaking up that would yield a smarter way of spending our foreign assistance money.

Barry Machado, a retired history professor from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., agreed that our foreign aid programs are what he called a "potpourri" and are in need of reorganization. He said they also need more clout. One of the reasons the Marshall Plan was successful was that the person who ran it in effect had Cabinet rank, he said.

But more important, there needs to be a widespread danger lurking, he said. Today, Africa's desperate economic conditions might seemingly qualify for a modern Marshall Plan and so might terrorism and violence spawned by religious extremism in the Middle East, he said.

First, Machado said, recipients of a new Marshall Plan should be real countries, not entities where tribal and religious sectarianism control things. "If you can't find a place where nationalism is paramount, don't bother," he said. And these countries should be democracies, he said, which would rule much of the Middle East. Iraq also has a shortage of political leadership that would make any aid program less effective, Machado said, not to mention the fact that it is one of the most insecure places on earth.

There was fear in the beginning that the Marshall Plan would be tantamount to throwing money down a rathole, but this did not happen, the professor said. "The Marshall Plan stands out as this remarkable success that accelerated a return to economic health in Europe," he said.

Paul Wolfowitz, who resigned recently as head of the World Bank, tried to help Africa advance economically through the bank's anti-poverty efforts, even as he fought corruption among many governments on that continent. He argued that he had made progress, but others said there was no evidence that all that aid had lifted economic growth in poor countries of Africa.

Europe, even though much of its infrastructure was destroyed in World War II, was much more advanced economically and responded to the Marshall Plan. But clearly not all aid does the intended job. And Brainard said our assistance programs need a close rethinking for that reason.

Gen. Marshall, who also served as secretary of defense, received the Nobel Prize in 1953 for his European recovery efforts. He said, "The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledges whose columns are gravestones. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war. Almost daily I hear it from the wives, or mothers, or families of the fallen. The tragedy of the aftermath is almost constantly before me."