The Enduring Mystique of the Marshall Plan

The Anti-Empire Report

By William Blum | March 1st, 2011
www.killinghope.org

[print_link]

A M I D S T. Let the buyer beware.

1

Spreading the capitalist gospel — to counter strong postwar tendencies towards socialism.

  • Pushing for the creation of the Common Market and NATO as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat.
  • Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist Parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the communists from any kind of influential role.

    • It is very difficult to find, or put together, a clear, credible description of how the Marshall Plan played a pivotal or indispensable role in the recovery in each of the 16 recipient nations. The opposing view, at least as clear, is that the Europeans — highly educated, skilled and experienced — could have recovered from the war on their own without an extensive master plan and aid program from abroad, and indeed had already made significant strides in this direction before the Plan’s funds began flowing. Marshall Plan funds were not directed primarily toward the urgently needed feeding of individuals or rebuilding their homes, schools, or factories, but at strengthening the economic superstructure, particularly the iron, steel and power industries. The period was in fact marked by deflationary policies, unemployment and recession. The one unambiguous outcome was the full restoration of the propertied class. 2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    Remarkable. Every one of the many wars the United States has engaged in since the end of World War II has been presented to the American people, explicitly or implicitly, as a war of necessity, not a war of choice; a war urgently needed to protect American citizens, American allies, vital American “interests”, freedom, or democracy. Here is President Obama speaking of Afghanistan: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity.” 7

  • Washington Post, July 12, 2006)
  • New York Times Magazine: “An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States, would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.”
  • Associated Press, December 14 and 15, 2010) He and Washington, naturally, are on the best of terms.
  • Washington Post, August 14, 2008) One really has to wonder at times about the sanity of neo-conservatives, or at least their IQ.
  • – Voltaire
  • Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly, stated in 2008: Cuba allows CNN, AP and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, but the US refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.
  • The American Century went the way of the Thousand Year Reich.
  • Reagan invaded Grenada in October 1983 because he cut and ran from Beirut after the United States lost 241 Marines in the infamous truck bombing. The United States invaded Grenada two days later.
  • The Mission, the Bill Clinton White House wanted CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni to order his pilots to provoke a military confrontation with Iraq in the no-fly zone by deliberately drawing fire from Iraqi planes.
  • – Richard K. Moore
  • The 9/11 attacks reflected the anger and rage that US foreign policy had produced in the past and then provided the excuse for US officials to continue such policy in the future.

    • Upcoming talks by William Blum

    Saturday, April 2, 7:00 pm
    University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, PA
    504 East Main Street
    Henne Auditorium
    Titusville is about 2 hours by car from Pittsburgh and 2 1/2 hours from Cleveland.
    For further information call 888-878-0462
    Or email Mary Ann Caton: caton@pitt.edu

    Thursday, May 19
    Paris, France
    Conference: “Ethics and US Foreign Policy in the 21st Century”
    Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, Amphi B-2
    All day, beginning at 9 am
    Email me for full schedule

    Notes

    1. essay on the use of the atomic bomb ↩
    2. ↩
    3. ↩
    4. ↩
    5. McClatchy Newspapers, February 26, 2011 ↩
    6. The Bombing of PanAm Flight 103: Case Not Closed ↩
    7. Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009 ↩

    –

    Senior Editor William Blum is the author of:

    • Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
    • West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
    • Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

    Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

    Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.