University Daily Kansan Supplement
Page 7
The Marshall Plan and the Berlin Wall
By Richard Bonett
The focal point of the East-West conflict is the wall the Communists have thrown up to protect the eyes of the East Germans from the gleam of the "decadent" jewel of West Berlin.
It symbolizes, in part, the economic resurgence of Western Europe compared to the much slower pace of development of the countries under Soviet domination.
The countries of Western Europe today do not comprise an economic Utopia. Separately and collectively they are confronted with the same persistent problems of economy faced by any nation: potential inflation, deflation, balance of payments, and degrees of full employment.
But within their economic framework, and in comparison with most other nations of the world, the countries of Western Europe are doing very well indeed. It is hard to realize that these same nations — like those of Eastern Europe — lay prostrate and economically immobile just 15 years ago.
What brought about the astounding change? Historians probably will argue about the dominant factors many years from now. It is probable that the U.S. Marshall Plan will be a central issue in the controversy.
Many reputable historians today see no ulterior motives in the
Richard Bonett, a graduate student in the William Allen White School of Journalism at KU, spent six years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two as security guard for the American Embassy in Rome. He received his B.A. degree in history and political science at the University of Wichita in 1957, and has had three and one-half years as a reporter on newspapers in Kansas and Missouri.
quiet proposal by Secretary of State George C. Marshall on June 5, 1947, that American post-war policy should be directed not "against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, despair and chaos."
The broad concepts of the Marshall Plan, implemented by a half dozen sometimes poorly-coordinated agencies, proved not to be a spectacular overnight success. European economic recovery made strides in 1948 and early 1949, then slumped in 1950 and 1951, apparently in response to a U.S. recession.
Under the Economic Cooperation Act of April, 1947, the U.S. looked to the completion by 1952 of what was termed the European Recovery Program. The Korean War, starting in June, 1950, wrecked that time-table, along with any scale for effective measurement of success or failure of the original plan.
The heightening of the East-West conflict brought the need for a transition, and the Marshall Plan bloomed into a three-pronged program of economic aid, military assistance, and technical aid under Point Four of the Truman Doctrine.
Marshall Plan aid totaled about 12 billion dollars from April, 1948, to July, 1952. Expenditures increased after that with a new heavy emphasis on military expenditures.
There is no doubt today that whatever motive Secretary Marshall had for suggesting his plan, the idea was saleable to the U.S. Congress as an instrument to stave off the very real possibility of Communist domination of Europe. It must be viewed, in part at least, as an anti-Communist investment. But it has paid dividends of far greater value.
While the Marshall Plan did not look toward fundamental solution of Europe's problems through intra-European integration or cooperation, it did much to promote what has come to be called a "functional" approach to such cooperation.
The constituent nations of Europe have never been able to achieve effective unity, though political unity has been imposed three times in modern history by Napoleon, Metternich, and Hitler. Prior to World War II, a degree of economic integration was carried out by the great European cartels.
The Marshall Plan provided Europeans with tangible proof that intra-Continental cooperation and coordination is feasible. It paved the way for the optimistic experiments which took the names of the European Payments Union, the Schuman Plan for a unified coal
and steel market, and the European Defense Community, all European-generated concepts.
Western Europe today is no match alone against the Soviet Union. But it is a dominant factor in the present East-West balance of power, helping to tip the scale in favor of the U.S. This Western European power, through increased cooperation, shows every indication of further growth.
That the nations which participated in the Marshall Plan have been resurrected from postwar chaos without becoming tools of American policy is evident in the sometimes dissident voices raised on questions of importance to the U.S., particularly from Paris and Bonn.
As an investment in the future, the European recovery program, starting with the Marshall Plan, was a bargain for the U.S. Russia has reason to fear Western Europe's resurgence, if for no other reason than that she controls what has been traditionally a part of Europe.
Unless the Soviet Union can match, in the European countries under its control, the economic and political progress of the West European nations, it may be confronted with a powerful movement on the part of its satellites to become a part of a European coprosperity sphere.
Such a movement might prove more powerful than military intimidation.
EARL'S PIZZA PALACE 729 Mass. VI 3-0753
---