Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ment reimposed currency controls. In the meantime, France was also seeking assistance from
the United States. Jean Monnet, an adviser to Charles de Gaulle, warned that without Amer-
ican aid, France could not regain “the first rank of industrial powers in Western Europe.”
The French would need massive financing from Washington to pay for postwar imports of
food, raw materials, and capital goods. 70 In the negotiations that followed, Monnet—like
Keynes—found Washington insistent on linking aid to a French commitment to trade liberal-
ization. The French, in turn, sought to circumscribe the conditions for trade openness. Liber-
alization would occur gradually with the reconstruction and modernization of the economy,
be made consistent with commitments to social democracy, and be tied to French goals for
postwar Europe. Like the British negotiations with the United States, the French aid agree-
ments addressed the immediate problems of postwar economic stabilization and recovery.
But they also served, at least indirectly, to advance a longer-term Atlantic consensus over
trade and modern democratic society.
These postwar aid agreements ultimately were overtaken by the worsening economic
plight in Europe and the coming Cold War. American officials who traveled to Europe in
the winter of 1946-47 were struck by the failure of recovery. Undersecretary of State Willi-
am Clayton returned from a tour of European capitals in the spring of 1947 alarmed by the
severe deterioration. Hunger and economic dislocation were widespread, industrial produc-
tion was declining, and Europe's payments deficit was rising. “If it should [grow],” Clayton
wrote, “there will be revolution.” 71 Neither the short-term humanitarian aid nor the long-
term Bretton Woods stabilization and adjustment mechanisms were adequate to the economic
disarray and political troubles in Europe. In the spring of 1947, as relations with the Soviet
Union continued to deteriorate, the Truman administration found itself confronting a crisis in
Greece and Turkey after Britain had announced that it no longer could maintain its security
commitments in the East Mediterranean. On March 12, the American president went before
Congress to announce the Truman Doctrine, committing the United States to aid societies
struggling against communism.
It was within this transformed political setting that the Truman administration moved to
announce a massive new aid program for Europe. This European Economic Program—the
so-called Marshall Plan—sent about $14 billion to Europe to rebuild the economies of Amer-
ica's emerging Cold War allies. Additional aid was also sent to Japan. This massive commit-
ment of aid was equal to roughly 5 percent of American's 1948 GNP. For most of the belea-
guered European countries, it amounted to between 3 and 6 percent of their national incomes
in the first years of the program.
The Marshall Plan aid program brought together economic and national security ra-
tionales. Clayton and other officials recognized that movement toward an open, multilateral
system would be impossible without aggressive steps to put Europe back on a path of eco-
 
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search