The Marshall Plan Taught Lessons Trump Refuses to Learn
An anniversary on which to remember why the U.S. built the post-World War II global order.
Some people remember.
Photographer: John MacdougalAFP/Getty Images
Short speeches can leave long legacies. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is remembered because it crystalized, in just a few sentences, why the Civil War was fought and what it would ultimately achieve.
Tuesday marks the anniversary of another landmark address characterized by admirable brevity. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall delivered a short speech at Harvard that laid out, in a handful of paragraphs, the rationale and outlines of the European Recovery Program, commonly known as the Marshall Plan. It proved to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of American diplomacy, and looms all the larger today because we seem to be forgetting the ideas and traditions that made it so effective.