Lessons From History
TEPPERMAN: Thank you, Sam. Hi, everyone. I’m Jonathan Tepperman. Welcome to this Council on Foreign Relations Lessons from History meeting on “The Legacy of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.”
The Lessons from History series is made possible through the generous support of David Rubinstein. David, we thank you for this.
CFR could not have picked better time for this discussion I have to say, and it could not have picked three better experts to have it with. Let me start by saying a few very brief words about our topic. I’ll then introduce our guests, and we’ll dive into the conversation.
So, as you all know, the antecedents for today’s discussion date back seventy-five years. In 1947, a United States that had barely finished fighting World War II and was then led by an inexperienced, accidental president, announced two bold and sweeping new policies: the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
Under the first of these, the U.S. government pledged its support for countries struggling against Soviet communism, and under the second, previewed in a speech that Secretary of State George Marshall gave at Harvard in June 1947, the United States would start spending huge amounts of money to help Europe rebuild its war-torn economies. So that’s where things started.
