The Marshall Plan And The Containment Policy

During the Second World War, as the arsenal of the Allied Powers, the United States not only experienced a wartime economic boom but also seized many strategic areas in the world and built some military bases in Europe. After the war, the ideological and strategic conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union became more and more intense and came out into the open. On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered a speech in Congress and declared the Soviet Union to be the chief enemy of the United States. In this speech President Truman put forward a proposal of containing the expansion of communism, which became the guiding ideology of the American foreign policy during the Cold War. Thereafter, the main objective of the U.S. foreign policy was to support the "free people" of all countries, and to contain the expansion of the Soviet's influence around the world. This message, later known as the "Truman Doctrine", was regarded as the informal declaration of the Cold War against the Soviet Union and marked the turning point of the U.S. foreign policy after the Second World War.To achieve the aforementioned objective, the American government believed that the strength of the Western Europe which had been seriously weakened by the war must be rapidly restored in order to withstand the menace of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Countries, and to extricate the Western Europe from the potential risk of domination by the Socialist parties at home and the Soviet Union. It was against this background that on June 5, 1947, American Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall proposed an economic aid program to Europe. This proposal came to be known as the Marshall Plan, which marked the first attempt of the U.S. government to implement the containment policy, and the transformation of the relations of the United States and the Soviet Union from wartime allies to Cold-War enemies.The Marshall Plan conducted by the United States to restore the devastated Europe, theimportant strategic area and the central battlefield of the U.S.-Soviet global competition, is the successful model of the American economic and technical assistance to foreign countries after the Second World War. The Marshall Plan paved the way for the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) and the European Economic Community ( E.E.C. ), promoted the economic recovery and the alliance of Western European countries, and forestalled an economic crisis which was going to occur in the American society.This thesis will refer to the formation of the American foreign policy during the Cold War and relevant documents, and by using the method of qualitative study, examine the historical background, contents and the implementation of the Marshall Plan, and conclude with its impacts on the American internal situation and the international community.