Installing Hegemony

The Marshall Plan as the Prototype of Economic Imperialism

Abstract

This study explores the Marshall Plan's role in forming a two-bloc framework in Europe and the beginning of the Cold War. The essay begins by examining the greater geopolitical context of the Second World War before delving into the foreign policy imperatives that shaped the Marshall Plan. Finally, it discusses the consequences of the aid program in Europe and the response in Moscow. The practical objectives of securing new markets in Europe guided policymakers in Washington. The Marshall Plan, formally known as the Economic Recovery Program, reinvigorated European industry and established basic financial infrastructure in the continent. In addition to laying the bedrock for an American-led economic landscape, the Marshall Plan sought to “contain” Soviet communism. The so-named strategy of “Containment” dictated critical foreign policy objectives concealed within the Plan. Indeed, American diplomacy also gave rise to a growing sense of great-power competition. The reaction to the plan in Eastern Europe solidified the “Iron Curtain,” as the essay ultimately describes the Soviet counterplans – the Molotov and the Cominform – widely regarded as the first of Stalin’s “cold-war” policies.