arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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Rember the Marshall Plan? by Guido Friday August 01, 2003 at 08:47 PM |
"Historians and officers of the Council on Foreign Relations are properly reticent about claiming institutional credit for the genesis of the Marshall Plan, despite all the institution's record of interest in economic affairs. "I do not believe that anything organized by the Council played any significant role in framing the Plan itself," wrote William Bundy, although he went on to credit Council study groups with "at least general contributions to the framework of thinking that underlay the Marshall Plan and NATO."
"Once out of the starting gate, however, containment, the Marshall Plan, and American commitment to the economic recovery and democratic institutions of Europe became the Council's new interest. Armstrong convened a study group in December 1947 to analyze the political conditions that would make the program of American economic aid most effective. High on the list of worries was the forthcoming election in Italy, where the Communist Party stood a good chance of winning. Council members discussed whether the United States could "give the Italians something"--a battleship or colony or something, as John Sloan Dickey, president of Dartmouth, put it in the sardonic shorthand of experts in after-dinner conversation."