The dollars themselves were important, of course, because they helped governments fight hunger and poverty without breaking the bank. To receive Marshall aid, a country had to curb government spending, balance its budget, and dismantle trade quotas and other restrictions on the free market. In practical terms, the plan pushed European governments to pursue sound economic strategies by giving the United States control over how Marshall aid was spent. The historian David Reynolds points out, "Marshall's offer was. The Marshall Plan sought to overcome this by letting Europeans know that they would not be allowed to fail. Farmers were reluctant to bring their crops to market. Such trepidation made it hard to get down to business. People were afraid of runaway inflation and political turmoil and skeptical of the free market. The real problem facing Europe in 1948 was fear. Trains were carrying almost as much freight as they had carried before the war. Most of the region's industrial infrastructure-electrical grids, water systems, roadways, and railways-had already been rebuilt. By the time Marshall aid started to flow, in the spring of 1948, Western Europe was hardly a wasteland. It did not single-handedly rebuild Western Europe. If American aid could rescue war-torn Germany, the thinking goes, it can certainly do the same for Afghanistan.īut the Marshall Plan wasn't what we think it was. In the popular imagination, the Marshall Plan transformed the economies of Europe, in just a few years, from ruined shells into vibrant industrial powerhouses. Politicians love to invoke the Marshall Plan as an example of how countries destroyed by war can be rebuilt almost overnight. And a chorus of pundits is calling for a multibillion-dollar reconstruction program modelled on, yes, the Marshall Plan. Marshall as the patron saint of nation- building. Labour Party leaders in Britain have adopted George C. President Bush compared the task to the way "America fed and rebuilt Japan and Germany" after the Second World War. Policymakers have summoned a simple idea: a Marshall Plan for the ravaged country. With the crumbling of the Taliban, the reconstruction of Afghanistan has leaped to the top of the world's to-do list.
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