US POLITICS

US Politics

US Politics



Introduction

The role of US Secretary of State Marshall in WWII victory

George C. Marshall a famous soldier and statesman won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. He is credited as the architect of the Allied victory in World War II. However, today he is probably best known for the eponymous Marshall Plan, which America and Europe put into force following the war. More formally known as the European Recovery Plan, the 1947 Marshall Plan had these goals: rebuild a war-devastated region; remove trade barriers; modernize industry; and make Europe prosperous again. Toward these ends, America paid out $13 billion dollars over four years, said to be the equivalent of $258B today, a little more than 1% of GDP per year. Here are some other comparisons to the present day. At the end of World War II, and ten years of economic depression, surely America had every right to feel poor, every right to say that a $13billiom investment in other countries was out of the question. The money was clearly needed at home prior to the War, U.S. national debt stood at 50% of GDP; after the war it was more like 120%. Today, U.S. debt stands at about 100% of GDP and it is not different from today's statistics (Beasley, 2001, 183).

Background of the topic

On a political level, things were also pretty much the same back in 1947, the year when Marshall Plan was enacted. At that time, an unpopular Democratic American president, Harry S Truman had collaboration with George Marshall for all the plans that were needed to be conducted in a step by step process. Truman is rather highly regarded today, besieged by a hostile Republican House and Senate. This is the reason why European Recovery Plan is known as the Marshall Plan instead of the Truman Plan. At the present times, people cannot image their president to say that the best thing for all the citizens would be to transfer $ 258 million and invest a significant portion in those countries where they have been fighting a war for the past several years. Yet historians tell people that post war U.S. investment in Europe had the practical effect of containing communism inside the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. At that time, Marshall and those in the State Department certainly hoped for this result, but at the same time argued that putting Europe back on its feet was simply the right thing to do. The value of this decision had significant importance (Boorstin, 1988, 93).

It can be recalled by the Noble Peace of Marshall that his goal was world peace. He saw three essentials: (1) education, not just brainwashing, instilling in the youth of every country the interpretation of history and reality according to the cultural preferences of that country, but a basis of facts. (2) A national feeling and concern for the problems of others that stemmed from our history as a nation of ...