Reflections on “The Marshall Plan and the Yearning for Transformative Visions”
By Axel Hellman
July 21, 2017
In April 2017, diplomats, academics, journalists and a number of graduate students convened at the Diplomatische Akademie in Vienna for the Milton Wolf Seminar. Centered on the theme “The Marshall Plan and the Yearning for Transformative Visions,” the discussions used the 70th anniversary of this initiative as a springboard for discussions on contemporary visions for world order and the “grand narratives” through which they are conveyed.
To me, these discussions presented an opportunity to delve deeper into an area which I have thoroughly studied in my academic career – international affairs and, in particular, U.S. foreign policy – but also to think about these subjects in important new ways. In particular, it was an opportunity to discuss something which I have recently taken a great interest in: the challenges to the liberal order of world affairs stemming from a deep resentment of it by people who feel that they have have been excluded from its benefits.
In this short piece, I will discuss the current and historical role of the United States in the world, the liberal order which it was instrumental in shaping, and how that order is now facing significant challenges that emanate not only from abroad but from within.
The Ambivalent Superpower
Whether people think of the brightest moments in U.S. history, such as President Kennedy’s pledge “to pay any price, bear any burden” in support of liberty, or highly criticized episodes such as the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the notion of America as the power in international affairs is frequently taken for granted. The Marshall Plan epitomizes this notion; yet it also laid its foundation by breaking with the historical trajectory of U.S. foreign policy.
The centrality of the United States in international affairs after World War II was never inevitable. Rather, the history of U.S. foreign policy has been marked, since the founding of the Republic, by a deep-rooted debate over the appropriate role of the United States in world affairs. Should it actively engage with other nations and promote its interests overseas? Or should it distance itself from the “Old World” of power politics, tainted as it was by perennial warfare between the European great powers? As Henry Kissinger has detailed, this philosophical dichotomy, between “America as beacon” (which held that the United States should focus on perfecting its own society in the image of its democratic ideals, and advance its interests by leading through example rather than engagement) and “America as crusader” (which held that because of those very ideals the United States was compelled to promote them through active engagement abroad) has bred an at times contradictory approach to U.S. foreign policy.[i]
It was by no means preordained that engagement would prevail. In his farewell address, George Washington famously warned his countrymen of the pitfalls and entanglements of maintaining permanent alliances; another Founding Father, John Quincy Adams, claimed that his was not a nation which went abroad in search of “dragons to slay.” These sentiments lingered – towards the end of the 19th century the United States had no standing army, a very modest Navy, and no widespread permanent diplomatic representation overseas.
During the first half of the twentieth century, as the United States intervened twice in order to tip the balance of power in the World Wars, the objective was always the same: to prevent a hostile power from dominating the Eurasian landmass. These interventions, however, did not represent a permanent interest in global engagement. At the close of World War II, Dean Acheson, at the time Assistant Secretary of State, summed up the main foreign policy priority of the American people in one sentence: “Bring the boys home.” Only a small minority of the American populace saw world affairs as a primary concern at the time; they wanted their government to focus on the economy at home. What people wanted, according to U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman, was just to “go to the movies and drink coke.”
The Post-war Project
Between their matinees and slurps of soda, however, the Americans did something less mundane: they built, together with their allies, the liberal world order that has defined international affairs over the last seven decades. When Acheson, who succeeded General Marshall as Secretary of State, wrote a biography over his years as a U.S. diplomat, he chose for its title “Present at the Creation.” Out of the ashes of World War II, a new political order was devised, aimed at a breaking a tradition of recurrent strife in Europe and beyond.
In this process, the Marshall Plan was an instrumental building block. After a series of ad hoc responses to post-war crises in Turkey, Greece, and Iran, the administration under President Truman formed a cohesive foreign policy approach during the spring of 1947, and the European Recovery Program – the Marshall Plan’s official name – was its linchpin. In response to the economic devastation in war-torn Europe – vividly described in memoranda to Washington by William Clayton, the State Department’s top aide for economic affairs – the United States poured an estimated 130 billion USD in today’s value into the continent. This was not, as consistently emphasized by panelists at the seminar, an act of altruism: it was a response to the recognition that a major initiative was needed to prevent Europe to either fall into the fold of communism, or return to a raucous historical pattern of nationalism, protectionism, and conflict.
The Liberal World Order
America’s ambivalence between engagement and retrenchment had seemingly given way to a steadfast American commitment on a broad scale. By committing to liberal institutions, an open economic system, and a military presence to back it all up, the United States laid the foundation of what is commonly known as “the liberal world order.” As the political scientist John Ikenberry has argued, “the [liberal world order] is complex and sprawling, organized around economic openness, multilateral institutions, security cooperation, democratic solidarity, and internationalist ideals” – and the United States is firmly at the steering wheel.[ii] A key aspect of this order is what Ikenberry has called “strategic restraint” – instead of exploiting its power position after World War II for domination, America restrained its power through institutional structures, in turn winning greater acceptance from its allies.[iii]
This narrative of post-war history should be problematized. As Robert Kaplan points out in a new book, “The American narrative is morally unresolvable because the society that saved humanity in the great conflicts of the twentieth century was also a society built on enormous crimes – slavery and the extinction of the native inhabitants.”[iv] Similarly, the liberal world order has never been perfect. Even its ardent defenders acknowledge this: It does not always promote stability, as it has been exploited to vindicate damaging interventions of weaker states; it is full of contradictions, as America and its allies have at times backed up illiberal regimes ; and even in the most liberal societies, disadvantaged groups long faced – and do still face – structural discrimination.[v] As the prominent liberal scholar Joseph S. Nye argues, “The Mythology that has grown up around the order can be exaggerated.”[vi] Still, as Ikenberry notes, “in terms of wealth creation, the provision of physical security and economic stability, and the promotion of human rights and political protections, no other international order in history comes close.”[vii] On the whole, the liberal world order has been a benevolent structure of world affairs.
A Decaying Order?
Yet this structure is looking more and more uncertain. This is not news – scholars and pundits have long debated America’s perceived diminishing influence and how it will affect the world. Michael Mandelbaum has outlined how mounting fiscal pressure will force post-crisis America to cut down on commitments overseas, noting that “impending economic constraints will place in jeopardy the global tasks that the United States has performed since the 1940s.”[viii] Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian best known for his work on the rise and fall of great powers, has suggested that America is falling into a historical trajectory of declining hegemons.[ix]
Lurking in the background of these debates is often what Fareed Zakaria has called “the rise of the rest,” that is, the dispersion of power in the international system as states such as the BRICS become increasingly willing and able to influence their environments.[x] Accordingly, those who have warned of a faltering U.S.-led world order have either pointed to an alleged American “overreach” or to challenges stemming from emerging loci of power in the international system.
The Populist Surge
What is remarkable about the toughest current challenges to the order that America constructed, therefore, is where they come from. They come not from the outside but from the inside, as a growing number of leaders in the United States and Europe, fueled by rising tides of populism, are starting to question the values and commitments on which the order rests. Across Europe, populist movements have gained momentum, and fueled by these tides, new leaders – seemingly oblivious to the lessons of the continent’s dark past – are lashing out against liberal institutions and principles. Hungary’s Victor Orban officially embraces “illiberal democracy.”
Most saliently, President Donald Trump has questioned the value of alliances, the virtue of free trade and multilateral institutions, and some of the fundamental values on which his country was founded. The President’s affront on core pillars of the liberal world order caused the latest cover page of Foreign Affairs to ponder whether we are “present at the destruction?” The contrasts to the post-war era are clear and striking indeed.
Seeing the Problem
These trends are worrying, but they do not come from nowhere. As political scientists Jeff Colgan and Robert Keohane recently pointed out, the populist surges across the West “reflect a breakdown in the social contract at the core of liberal democracy: those who do well in a market-based society promise to make sure that those disadvantaged by market forces do not fall too far beyond.”[xi] According to Colgan and Keohane, the liberal order has in recent decades been hijacked by elites who have exploited it to their own personal gain at the expense of ordinary people – particularly those who have fallen behind in the age of globalization.[xii]
Proponents of the liberal world order, and the globalization that has thrived within it, have always done a good job at explaining its benefits – economic growth, prosperity, relative stability and so on. Its drawbacks, however, have rarely been acknowledged. Concerns over lay-offs and pay cuts resulting from outsourcing and automation, and the lack of rootedness that some people see globalization as causing, have too often been brushed away as minor nuisances in the grander scheme of positive developments. When everyone knows that the arch of history is bending towards more openness, more interdependence, more prosperity, it is easy to miss the warning signs on the way. I think that is why so many of us were genuinely surprised when the populist wave began to sweep across the West.
A Grand Vision for the Twenty-first Century
Current trends in world affairs are a cause for concern. If the past seven decades have been characterized by a benevolent (if flawed) liberal order, what we may now face is its antithesis – a disorder. As another seminar participant, Bobo Lo, has suggested, “In the new world disorder, countries are much more disposed and able to resist leadership, from wherever it comes and whatever form it takes…Indeed, so strong is this resistance that it may be more accurate to say that the world is not witnessing the end of leadership so much as the end of ‘followership’.”[xiii] As I have attempted to delineate here, this applies not only to developments between, but also within states. One would be forgiven to ask whether there is such a thing as a “grand vision” today.
Yet, as Bobo mentioned in one of our discussions, perhaps – despite the dark clouds currently hovering above us – this is a moment of opportunity. The liberal world order may be broken, but it is not too late to fix it. To do so, however, it is not enough to repair the cracks; the order must be reformed, and its shortcoming must be seriously addressed. As Bobo noted in the seminar, liberal states must improve their core foundations of capitalism and democracy. While these institutions have produced unparalleled prosperity in the modern era, they have also failed to meet a lot of people’s expectations, especially over the last few decades.
Above all else, the liberal order and the societies that make it must become more inclusive. As one of the panelists in Vienna pointed out, the real value of the Marshall Plan lay not in its direct economic application – rather, its most significant effect was to create a sense of hope and common purpose for the future. It seems like this hope has to a large extent been lost and as a result, people and societies are increasingly turning inwards, away from others, and express their disappointments by denigrating the institutions they see as the sources of their predicament. Reversing this trend will, of course, not be an easy task. But if this endeavor succeeds, it has the potential to establish a strengthened, more sustainable order. We do not need to look far for inspiration. As General Marshall noted when he rolled out the broad contours of the Marshall Plan in the spring of 1947, “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”[xiv]
Works Cited
[i] Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 18.
[ii] G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-04-17/plot-against-american-foreign-policy.
[iii] G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
[iv] Robert D. Kaplan, Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World (New York: Random House, 2017), 42.
[v] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., ”Will the Liberal Order Survive? The History of an Idea,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 1 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-12/will-liberal-order-survive; G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-04-17/plot-against-american-foreign-policy.
[vi] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., ”Will the Liberal Order Survive? The History of an Idea,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 1 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-12/will-liberal-order-survive.
[vii] G. John Ikenberry, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-04-17/plot-against-american-foreign-policy.
[viii] Michael Mandelbaum, The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 3.
[ix] Paul Kennedy, “Back to Normalcy,” New Republic, December 21, 2010, https://newrepublic.com/article/79753/normalcy-american-decline-decadence.
[x] Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).
[xi] Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane, ”The Liberal Order Is Rigged,” Foreign Affairs 96, no. 3 (2017), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2017/96/3.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Bobo Lo, Russia and the New World Disorder (Brookings and Chatham House, 2015), 62.
[xiv] OECD, ”The ’Marshall Plan’ speech at harvard University, 5 June 1947,” http://www.oecd.org/general/themarshallplanspeechatharvarduniversity5june1947.htm.