Benn Steil: “The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War” | SALT Talks #137

Benn Steil is a senior fellow and director of international economics, as well as the official historian in residence, at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, was named the winner of the New-York Historical Society's Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, awarded each year to the best work in the field of American history or biography. Before his death, FDR developed four pillars of a post-WWII foreign policy: peaceably dismantle the British Empire; build permanent peace between the United States and the Soviet Union; profitably dismember and deindustrialize Germany, and integrate the global economy with short-term IMF loans. This represented the hope for a one-world architecture where the US and Soviet Union got along. Circumstances quickly forced then-President Harry Truman to pivot and begin dividing the world between Marshall states- countries that asserted liberal democracy and free markets- and Soviet states under communist rule. This marked the dawn of the Cold War. “When we get to 1947 and the Marshall plan, the Truman Administration is already in a major corrective mode. The State Department is already talking openly about a two-world vision for the post-war order.” ————————————————————————— To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit salt.org/talks Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci.