The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall Plan

Datos Bibliográficos

ID16530751
AutoresMelvyn P Leffler (0000-0001-8327-7125, autor de correspondencia)
Año1988
Volumen12
Número3
Páginas277-306
Fecha de publicación1988-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaDiplomatic History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0145-2096 • E-ISSN: 1467-7709
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-7709.1988.tb00477.x
OpenAlexW2037224859
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas7

The purpose of this article is to examine the geopolitical, strategic, and military implications and ramifications of the Marshall Plan. Although American officials hoped the Marshall Plan would benefit the American economy, they also wanted to redress the European balance of power and to enhance American national security. By national security, American officials meant the control of raw materials, industrial infrastructure, skilled manpower, and military bases. And from their viewpoint, the most fundamental strategic interest of the United States was to prevent any potential adversary or coalition of adversaries from mobilizing the resources and economic-military potential of Europe for war-making purposes against the United States.1 In this context, American policymakers had two major objectives and one minor one in launching the Marshall Plan in June 1947. First, they wanted to spawn economic recovery in Western and Southern Europe, undermine the appeal of Communist parties, and thereby circumscribe the latent influence and power of the Kremlin. Second, American officials sought to revive the western zones of Germany and to integrate them into a Western economic and political orbit. Third, and much less central than the preceding two goals, American Marshall Planners hoped to drive a wedge into the emerging Soviet bloc of satellite states in Eastern Europe. Only by accomplishing these aims, especially the two major goals enumerated above, could American officials thwart the Soviet Union's capacity to harness Europe's industrial and military potential for its own purposes

Cold war · Communism · Geopolitics · Marshall Plan · National security · Peacetime · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition · Public Administration · Russia and Soviet political economy