Title: Why Marshall Plan was so important | Op-eds – Gulf News
Headings: Why Marshall Plan was so important
Why Marshall Plan was so important
Content: The standard of living in participating countries grew almost 150 per cent over the next three decades, and the strong economic base that the Marshall Plan provided also benefited the United States, leading to significant US export growth to Western Europe. n 4. The plan helped spur European integration. Many in the Truman administration were hoping to replicate America in Europe, creating a type of “United States of Europe”. The first steps in this process were actually launched in Marshall’s speech itself, when he called on the Europeans to come together to hash out their priorities and needs on their own. The 16 participating European nations met to discuss a comprehensive plan a little more than a month after Marshall’s speech. While certainly not the only factor driving Europeans toward integration, as Marshall Plan scholar Michael Hogan notes, the plan “helped to set the Europeans on a road that led from the economic autarky of the 1930s to the Common Market of the 1960s”. Likewise, many of these same nations would sign the Brussels Treaty of 1948 on mutual defence, the precursor to the formation of Nato the following year. Ultimately, the Marshall Plan was one of several components that drove European recovery. It also created a vast well of goodwill between the United States and Europe.