Good-bye to All That
Friday Book Club
Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
A.J. Liebling, the mid-20th century American journalist, was living in Paris, supported by a small monthly stipend provided by his father in 1927. Writing years later about the limited news he and his fellow compatriots received from home, he noted the “persistent efforts of the press to read humorous profundity into Calvin Coolidge’s dim silence.”
If Liebling were alive today, he might have commented on how the American press and media bend over backwards to read thoughtful reasoning into Donald Trump’s blaring twaddle. Not that the shallow, ignorant rhetoric was ever difficult to interpret, even though the coming storm was quite easy to see if any of them had taken the time and effort to actually read Project 2025 months leading up to the November 2024 election.
Add to that the empirical evidence of more than 30,000 documented lies Trump told in his first term and the official narrative of January 6, 2021, that it was an innocent temper tantrum. It’s not hard to understand the calamitous consequences for national and world stability being unleashed daily.
The Trump administration’s rapid obliteration of the foundations is dependent on proliferating a willful ignorance and dishonest revision of American foreign policy that has been, more or less, consistent since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It makes more sense knowing Trump had – and perhaps still has – no idea what Pearl Harbor was or represents.
Less than a month after taking office, Vice President J.D. Vance’s undiplomatic sledgehammer of a speechbefore the Munich Security conference on February 15, 2025, which crudely chiseled the United States out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The speech marked the de facto end of an 80 year-plus tradition: A multilateralism of mutual interests has been replaced by a policy of bilateralism of competing interests.
The new goal is a mentality, as Trump says ad nauseum, of bilateral deals of winners and losers, with American interests getting the better of each one. Multilateralism, webs of shared burdens and reciprocal outcomes – at least those with American participation – is practically obsolete. Whatever relationships remain are as diaphanous as reused gauze from Civil War battlefield hospitals.
And it’s not just in diplomacy, military matters, or trade – as is obvious in shift seen in the past two-plus months in Ukraine or the belligerent behavior with Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Europe. It extends to U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, and other globally or regionally based agreements or organizations. The bilateral agreements to pay countries like El Salvador and Venezuela to imprison persons in the U.S. with no due process and blatant disregard for legal order are just a few of hundreds of examples.
These are a few of the many good reasons to consider Michael J. Hogan’s The Marshall Plan: America Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (Cambridge University Press, 1987). He argues the Marshall Plan was a natural progression of a foreign policy that stretched back to the McKinley administration at the turn of the 20th century. Decades later it incorporated the spirit of New Deal policies, which “committed public officials more firmly to the principles of multilateralism and made the government more responsible for organizing the international economy.”
The mythology of the Marshall Plan goes a little something like this: “Once upon a time there was a horrible war that killed a lot of people and destroyed much of a continent. One of the victors of that war, out of the goodness of their hearts, wanted to help their allies, who had suffered greatly, as well as the people in the countries they defeated, who deserved a second chance. So, they generously gave those countries a lot of money, which they used to fix their problems, and everyone lived happily ever after.”
Since many – at least of those who have an inkling of knowledge about the Marshall Plan – believe versions of this tale, it is popular to invoke the Marshall Plan as a catch-all, quasi-utopian solution to all types of complex, big issues, not just the aftermath of wars; a Marshall Plan for this, that, or the other. Altruism, however, was never its purpose.
The Marshall Plan rested squarely on an American conviction that European economic recovery was essential to the long-term interests of the United States.
Secretary of State George Marshall’s first public statement about a post-World War II European Recovery Program (ERP) was on June 5, 1947, in a Harvard University commencement speech. Its “purpose,” he announced, was “the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
Although the ERP was largely Truman’s idea, he knew attaching his name to the package would have too much partisan political baggage.[1] Truman felt naming it after Marshall would improve the odds for passage. For good reason.
It's difficult to explain today how consequential Marshall was in his time, especially since his most consequential ideas and achievements were, for the most part, done well outside of public sight or awareness. Within the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, regardless of political affiliation, Marshall was trusted unconditionally, carrying more weight and influence than any person in American history, excepting perhaps George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.
Based his word alone, delivered in closed hearings in 1940, Congress agreed to dramatically increase military spending in anticipation of what would become World War II (WWII), even as they and Roosevelt campaigned to keep out of wars already raging in Europe and Asia. As the Army Chief of Staff at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s side, Marshall led the Allied strategy of WWII, directing both theaters from Washington, DC. Indeed, he led the planning and was designated to be the supreme commander for D-Day, lobbying successfully for a summer 1944 invasion when many Allied leaders preferred doing so a year later.[2]
Roosevelt feared not having Marshall’s immediate counsel at his side. Command was subsequently given to Dwight Eisenhower, an assignment one could easily trace back to the spark of popularity that would lead him to the presidency in 1952.[3]
Marshall, ever the dutiful servant to nation and president, accepted his assignment without question or complaint. In sharp contrast to the bluster often expected of battlefield generals, contemporary witnesses of his behavior – and his diary – in the days leading up to and on D-Day confirm, to all outward appearances, June 6, 1944, was just another workday. Not once did he betray what would happen that day or his deep disappointment of not being to lead his troops across the English Channel.
Almost exactly three years later, Marshall’s name would be attached to the program designed to win the peace. The Marshall Plan intended to be the “soft power” needed to fortify the Truman Doctrine’s goal of containing Soviet influence.[4]
Continued American involvement in Europe after winning WWII would hopefully deter a repeat of American disengagement from the world, despite Woodrow Wilson’s failed effort to have the nation become a member of the League of Nations after World War I. The perpetual instability of the 15-year Weimar Republic that led to Nazi takeover of Germany had to be avoided.
More than two years after the Nazi surrender, Europe remained in a state of economic and social chaos, with wild fluctuations in inflation, supply, and demand. Power structures within and among nations were unclear.
In his Harvard speech, Marshall said, despite the hoped for American investment, rebuilding Europe “was the business of Europeans” and that “the program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all, European nations.” In reality, the offer was implicitly part of a larger policy to contain the growth of influence and power of the Soviet Union and its satellites, an important consideration to get congressional support for funding the ERP. Complicating matters,
Europeans…sought a recovery program that would limit the scope of cooperative action, meet their separate requirements, and preserve the greatest degree of national self-sufficiency and autonomy. Americans, on the other hand, wanted to refashion Western Europe in the image of the United States.
A minority of congressional Republicans believed the cost of the ERP would nurture socialist policies and programs. Supporters argued otherwise:
…political isolation of the United States would lead to a militarization of American society. In a hostile world, the American people would have to live in an armed camp and bear the burden of skyrocketing defense expenditures.
The strategic assumptions behind this policy held that an integrated economic order, particularly one headed by supranational institutions, would help to control German nationalism, reconcile Germany’s recovery with France’s economic and security concerns, and thus create a balance of power in the West sufficient to contain Soviet power in the East.
A year passed until legislation with annual appropriation of more than $4 billion – $57.24 billion in 2025 dollars – was approved.
The primary tension to implement the Plan came from the United Kingdom. In an Animal Farm-esque way, they favored equality of funding support from America, but only if they were “more equal than others.” “British and American leaders tangled on almost every issue,” with Americans being often seen as “patronizing.” Their primary argument was that Great Britain was not “just another European country.”
The Americans wanted to harness free-market forces to the cause of economic integration and multilateralism. The British wanted to bottle them up in a socialist empiricism that sheltered their economy, kept them at arms-length from the Continent, and safeguarded their reserve position and ties to the Commonwealth.
Fostering multilateralism wasn’t easy. Europeans were protective of bilateral, ad-hoc trading policy that “permitted government controls instead of price mechanisms to determine the distribution of resources and encouraged participating countries to earn dollars through the operation of the payments system rather than through exports to the Western Hemisphere.”
Although the British saw nothing improper in a “special relationship” with their transatlantic relatives, they were appalled at the prospect of sharing close and continuous quarters with the Italians, the French, and the Germans. The French, on the other hand, feared Anglo-Saxon hegemony and dominance. When the French took the initiative to form a larger market of France, Italy, and the Benelux nations into a “Fritalux” common market, British leaders moved quickly to undermine it.
The fate of Germany, the emerging Cold War, and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) added to the political complexity. Soviets tepidly advocated for a weak, unified, “neutral Germany that played West against East to the detriment of European recovery and security.” Western policymakers toiled to integrate West Germany militarily and economically into the European sphere while trying to avert France’s fears.
The goal…was to enhance Western Europe’s military strength without eroding living standards and making participating countries vulnerable to a resurgent Communist threat from “within.” The way to achieve this goal was through accelerated efforts to tap underutilized resources in Germany, Italy, and Belgium, restrain inflationary pressures, and allocate scarce commodities efficiently…If rearmament overshadowed recovery, if the North Atlantic Treaty superseded the Marshall Plan, economies would falter, living standards would collapse, and social peace would give way to resumption of the political struggle that had always posed a greater threat than Soviet arms to the security of Western Europe.
The tipping point that shifted Marshall Plan funding from economic aid to military spending — which ultimately killed the Plan altogether — was the outbreak of the Korean War. Since it would draw significantly more from the American treasury, it became more important to solidify NATO as viable bulwark against Soviet military aggression. Moreover, Europeans would have a greater responsibility to implement an American-style diplomacy.
French foreign minister Robert Schuman feared that British and German interests would create “new iron curtains on our side of [the] present Iron Curtain.” Realizing that Britain’s aspirations, however unrealistic they might have been, would not be addressed in a timely way, Schuman embarked on direct negotiation with Germany to formalize their interdependence and directly confront France’s misgivings about her historical rival.
The Schuman Plan eased Europe’s dependence on Marshall Plan aid. Pragmatically “it amounted to the treaty of peace that had never been signed.” It created a binational authority to regulate coal and steel production, which “reconciled Germany’s recovery with France’s economic and security concerns.” And, in a move that further satisfied American policymakers, “the Schuman Plan pointed to a European neo-capitalism founded on the New Deal synthesis.”
There is no question that the Marshall Plan, despite being curtailed by military geopolitics, was a great success. “By March 1951, industrial production in Western Europe had climbed 13 percent above the level of a year earlier, 39 percent above the prewar level.” Additionally, American demand for raw materials to build its military capacity “swelled European gold and dollar reserves and narrowed the dollar gap to such an extent that Marshall aid to Great Britain could be suspended at the end of 1950.”
During the Marshall Plan period, Western Europe’s aggregate gross national product jumped by more than 32 percent, from $120 billion to $159 billion [approximately $1.78 trillion to $2.28 trillion in 2025 dollars]; agricultural production climbed 11 percent above the prewar level, just slightly less than the target set in 1948; and industrial output increased by 40 percent against the same benchmark, greatly exceeding…original projection[s].
It would, however, be a mistake to give the U.S. all the credit for the upswing. Subsequent research found that “80-90 percent of capital formation in the major European economies” came from “local resources.”
The success of the Marshall Plan had many parents, but they had to work together to succeed. Over three years, the U.S. contributed more than $13 billion [$186 billion in 2025 dollars] as well as assistance that
…involved the transfer not of commodities and resources but of knowledge, skill, and other services of great importance by little cost. In the most profound sense, it involved the transfer of attitudes, habits, and values as well, indeed, of a who way of life that Marshall Planners associated with progress in the marketplace of politics and social relationships…This was the American way of life.
Local populations merged these contributions with their own social and political circumstances. Taken together, decades of prosperity – most notably the “German economic miracle” – laid the groundwork for a modern Europe and creation of the European Union.
Hogan’s dense writing covers every, at times, excruciating detail of what happened and is filled a jumble of acronyms that can try a reader’s patience. This is a book of reasoned, well thought out ideas and meticulous documentation with a no-nonsense analysis about one of the most important episodes of 20th century history.
It is a timely reminder of the potential power and substantive effects of multilateralism. And the irreparable damage of its neglect.
American credibility throughout the world has never been lower than it is now. This extends to every issue and topic in the national interest – from diplomacy, to healthcare, to the environment, to responses to man-made or natural disasters, and so on. The world is trying to laugh through the shock of its horror and tears of what is becoming of a once-admired nation. Even from its adversaries.
Devastation of healthcare infrastructure, indiscriminate firings, legal and administrative sanctioning of quackery, and coming privatization of the social safety net – which, compared to every other western, industrialized country, was never particularly safe or secure – is costing and will cost lives.
Denigration of individuals with disabilities in schools, employment, accessibility, especially of military veterans, which has been expressed by Trump for years, is unprecedented, cruel, and immoral.
The random shifting of legislatively mandated, legal missions of federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency becoming a tool of selective corporate interests that is complexly counter to its intent, makes the role of every federal agency. The same has been shown to be true with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is now an extension of Project 2025’s goal to dishonestly rewrite and relitigate the Covid pandemic to create a reality of an Alice in Wonderland-like jabberwocky.
But perhaps the most disturbing, “never thought I’d see,” event, even for someone like me who sadly predicted this reality on January 7, 2021, knew what was coming last July after reading a few hundred pages of Project 2025, and was rendered speechless a couple of months before and after the November 2024 election, what occurred in Somerville, Massachusetts still left me stunned. Even though I was aware of what was happening to targeted foreign students at American universities.
Actually seeing a Tufts University PhD student from Türkiye,[5] Rumeysa Ozturk, kidnapped by masked secret police in the name of my government and knowing she was renditioned to a federal facility in one of my two hometowns, New Orleans made me realize the rule of law no longer holds in the U.S. It was closer to the actions of the Iranian Shah’s SAVAK, Duvalier’s Tonton Macoute in Haiti, and the abductions of desaparecidosby the miliary dictatorships in Argentina and Chile’s Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s.
And it all happened just a few miles from the site of the Boston Tea Party that started the American Revolution and gave birth to the democratic-republic that is now the wealthiest, most powerful nation in human history. The shame and stench in its wake is unbearable.
I question if nations around the world would ever accept an offer of a Marshall-like Plan from the U.S. in the future. Or if any nation would offer the U.S. one should it somehow survive the Gleichschaltung we see unfolding right before the world’s collective eyes.
Photo at top of article: Rooftops of Bergen, Norway’s Bryggen.
[1] President Barack Obama’s willingly acceptance of the term “Obamacare” for the Affordable Care Act is proof of this thesis.
[2] “The unwritten rules of coalition warfare demanded that the nation furnishing the bulk of troops also provide the supreme commander. By rights, the post was Marshall’s to claim. As the foremost proponent of the cross-Channel invasion in Allied Councils, Marshall had earned its command. Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed at the Quebec Conference just four months before that the army chief of staff would lead OVERLORD [the code name for D-Day]; Mrs. Marshall had quietly packed their belongings and secretly vacated Quarters No. 1 at Fort Myer, the traditional home of the chief of staff. Expecting that new command, Marshall himself had even hinted to a handful of British and American officers he wanted to join them he wanted them to join him at Supreme Headquarters in London when he took command on January 1, 1944.” Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall Soldier and Statesman, (Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 8.
[3] Eisenhower’s political affiliation was unknown – even to himself – until shortly before he announced his candidacy. Truman was willing to step aside before the 1948 election, strongly encouraging Eisenhower to run in his place on the Democratic ticket. Eisenhower declined and Truman went on to win in what is still considered the greatest presidential electoral upset in American history even though he was the incumbent.
[4] The Truman Doctrine helped coin commonly used terms to classify global categories of “worlds”: first (the U.S. and its allies of western industrialized nations that would expand to eventually include Japan), second (under the Soviet sphere of influence), and third (lesser developed nations not affiliated with either).
[5] Politically motivated election crackdowns this week in Türkiye provide another glimpse of inspiration for the Trump administration.
Thank you...I was struck by how relatively young the ICE agents were who appeared out of their cars and took Rumeysa Ozturk--fascist accomplices continue to be bred...