Don't Expect A US Marshall Plan To Rebuild Ukraine

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The continent was politically and militarily divided, too. Europe's western half was influenced by the democratic, capitalistic forces led by the US Eastern Europe was beholden to the communist, command-economy forces of the Soviet Union .

In a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri , former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill articulated Europe's growing postwar divide. Over the ruins of proud nations, he said,“an iron curtain” had“descended across the continent.”

US looks abroad

Unlike Europe, the US emerged from World War II as the wealthiest nation in the world, with its territory intact and unharmed . Its steel and oil industries were booming. By 1947, the US was the clear successor to Great Britain as the world's superpower.

But President Harry Truman feared the ambitions of the war's other great victor – the Soviet Union. In March 1947, he announced a new doctrine to contain communist expansion southward across Europe by giving $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey.

Around the same time, US Secretary of State George Marshall met with Soviet officials to plan Germany's future. Following the Nazis' surrender in May 1945, Germany had been divided into four occupied zones administered by US, British, French and Soviet forces.

Each nation had its own goals for its section of Germany. The US wanted to revitalize Germany politically and economically, believing that a moribund Germany would thwart the economic reconstruction of all of Europe .

Marshall hoped that the Soviets would cooperate, but Soviet ruler Josef Stalin preferred extracting reparations from a prostrate Germany to investing in its recovery. A vibrant German economic engine, the Soviets felt, could just as easily rearm to attack the Russian countryside for the third time that century.

The Truman administration chose to unilaterally rebuild the three Western Allied sectors of Germany – and Western Europe.

Marshall outlined his plan at a commencement address at Harvard University in June 1947. American action to restore global economic health, he said, would provide the foundation for political stability and peace in Europe.

And an economically healthy Western Europe, in turn, would inhibit the spread of communism by plainly demonstrating the benefits of capitalism .

“Our policy is not directed against any country,” Marshall said ,“but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”

Marshall's plan

Marshall invited all European nations to participate in drafting a plan to first address the immediate humanitarian aid of Europe's people, then rebuild its infrastructure. The US would pay for it all .

For nearly bankrupt European nations, it was a lifeline. In September 1947, the new Committee for European Economic Co-operation , composed of 16 Western – but not Eastern – European nations, delivered its proposal to Washington.

It would take a masterful legislative strategy for the Democratic Truman administration to persuade the Republican-led Congress to pass this $13 billion bill. It succeeded thanks to the dedicated effort of Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg , who convinced his isolationist colleagues that the Marshall Plan would halt the expansion of communism and benefit American economic growth.

In April 1948, Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act . By year's end, over $2 billion had reached Europe, and its industrial production had finally surpassed prewar levels seen in 1939.

NATO is born

Along with economic stability, the Truman administration recognized that Europe needed military security to defend against communist encroachment by the Soviet Union.

In July 1949, 12 European countries, the US and Canada established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization . NATO committed each member country to the mutual defense of fellow NATO members.

Since 1947, NATO has steadily expanded eastward to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other former Soviet satellite states directly bordering Russia.

Ukraine, which declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, is not yet a NATO member. But it desperately wants to be .