AMBASSADOR Robert Holmes Tuttle
Speeches, Remarks & Events
05 June 2007
Address by Ambassador Robert H. Tuttle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan
Delivered at Rhodes House, Oxford University, hosted by the Rothermere American Institute.
"The applause began at the far end of the maple- and elm-shrouded quadrangle.
"The sound rolled toward the platform on the steps of Memorial Church, swelling as the 8,000 in the audience recognized the tall man heading the column . . . to be awarded honorary degrees this pleasant June morning.
"George Catlett Marshall had come to Harvard Yard . . . to be proclaimed a doctor of laws . . . ."
Ed Cray, in his biography of General George C. Marshall, paints an evocative picture of the moment, and of the speech that has come to embody the quiet man known as the Father of European Recovery – if not the military architect of the allied victory itself.
On that June day, 60 years ago today, Marshall had more than the grand occasion on his mind. Never looking for self-promotion or honors, he had turned down that same invitation the previous two years. He had accepted that year – and only at the last minute – because he had a new mission.
He mounted the stage knowing that he was going to not only challenge the people of the United States to extend a hand of support to a devastated Europe, but attempt nothing less than a reconciliation between the victors and the vanquished. He thus changed the shape of American foreign policy for decades to come.
Yet, by his own lights, and typical of the man, he was simply doing what needed to be done, if the United States was going to do the right thing for the country – and for the future.
Marshall had been the Army's Chief of Staff throughout the war. But in 1947, he agreed reluctantly to be recalled from retirement to become President Truman's Secretary of State.
His now-famous speech, setting out the idea of the Marshall Plan, bore all the hallmark characteristics that had carried him to that place – and that continued to mark him out throughout the rest of his career.
It was direct and to the point. It was not impassioned, as much as it was pragmatic. It was not flamboyant, as much as it was matter-of-fact. It was steeped in his deep sense of public service and of duty.
The people of the United States were, he said, ". . . distant from the troubled areas of the earth, and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments, in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world. . . ."
It was, he suggested, ". . . virtually impossible at this distance, merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp . . . the real significance of the situation.
And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment.
". . . Our policy," he argued, was ". . . not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger – poverty – desperation – and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world, so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."
To achieve that, he concluded, the American people must ". . . face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed on our country . . . ."
In his words could be heard the very echo of those spoken by Winston Churchill on that same Harvard stage only four years before, when the British Prime Minister had said,
". . . The price of greatness is responsibility. . . . One cannot rise to be . . . the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies, and inspired by its causes. . . .
". . . The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. "
There could be no clearer demonstration that the leaders of the United States had heard Churchill's words, and were willing to accept that challenge, than George Marshall's speech that day.
But even as Marshall was speaking to his audience in Harvard Yard, his colleagues in Washington were ensuring that European leaders understood its importance.
For months, Marshall's team at the State Department had been seized with the urgency of the situation in Europe. They were determined that the United States would play its role to support reform and recovery – although – as Marshall himself made clear from the outset, the solutions must come from the Europeans themselves.
The Europeans, for their part, did not waste any time. Within days, if not hours, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union were talking about what this might mean. Sixteen of the 22 countries invited met in Paris within a month.
However, it became clear, almost from the beginning, that our former allies in the Soviet Union were modifying their position.
The door to the Soviets would remain open, but Marshall feared the Soviet leaders would not take up the offer, almost as much as he feared that if they did, support for the Plan would splinter.
Marshall set out the core elements of what would eventually be known, and passed by Congress, as the "Marshall Plan," and what we have come together to commemorate today.
There is no escaping the fact – the Marshall Plan was not born of pure altruism. It called for sacrifice on the part of the American people. But it was a short-term sacrifice to serve the long-term goal of political and economic security, stability and freedom of America's major trading partners, largest markets, and its closest allies.
It was the sacrifice of enlightened self-interest, as it became clear that the Soviet Union was drawing a net around its satellites to pull them away from their neighbors and allies – and to prepare the way for their later attempt to put a stranglehold on Germany.
The global tables were shifting, and Marshall had looked into the future.
A man renowned for planning and preparation, he believed he could see what the United States needed to do to protect its own freedom – and what would encourage freedom in the changing world.
For Europeans, the Marshall Plan was a clear turning point. Contained within the economic recovery package, were the beginnings of not only the European coal and steel community, but NATO and the European Union.
The continent of Europe was re-formed and re-born. Neighbor would no longer lay waste to neighbor but would come together in a new enterprise – for peace and prosperity.
But what did the Plan mean for the Americans? The impact was not as direct, but it was no less dramatic.
The Marshall Plan held a key strategic place within the new approach President Truman had announced to a joint session of Congress just a few months prior to Marshall's Harvard speech.
Truman was well aware of the fact that the United States had deeply-held, almost instinctive, isolationist tendencies. The admonitions of the Founding Fathers to maintain their distance from entanglements in Europe had not faded.
And while the defense of freedom had historically been a strong theme of government policy that extended up to President Wilson's 14 Points, the underlying trend did not include helping people of other countries to free themselves.
The change in what became known as "The Truman Doctrine" was guided not only by the President's realist view of world power, but by his recognition of the reality that the pursuit of freedom was not only an American concern, but a concern that America ignored at its peril.
Seen in that context, Marshall's challenge to the United States, and his offer to Europeans, is part of a wider, and perhaps even more fundamental, shift in the motivations of U.S. foreign policy.
For the first time, but not for the last, the United States was animated by a spirit of humanitarian intervention in the name of freedom and a process of economic involvement couched in conditional partnership that would remain a strong current of policy.
Marshall was not standing against the trends of his time, but he was, on many levels, the instrument to re-frame America's founding values that shape the world in which we find ourselves today.
I believe commemoration of anniversaries such as this has two functions: the first is the more obvious – that is to give us pause to reflect on the events themselves.
We cannot ever know how history may have turned in its courses with different personalities at the helm.
Nor can we know how close we came as societies to a different outcome, either in the battles – or the war - or the turbulent times that followed.
There were surely countless moments during those chaotic days and years that our collective fate was no more than a hair's breadth, or a heartbeat, away from disaster.
Therefore, we dare not forget the importance of the plain truth that these men were not prophets; they had no secret insights or sources of information. They struggled in relative ignorance of what was going on elsewhere in the world, or even on the daily battlefield.
They had little more than their own experience and beliefs to guide them. They could not possibly know the outcome as they struggled with events that must have seemed, at times, beyond human tolerance.
It is right that we marvel and hold up their determination against failure, and their abiding faith in their values, as a model of leadership in the face of adversity.
It is also important to understand this time as the wellspring of the unique relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.
The efforts of our respective governments, both during the war and in its aftermath, created the habits of association, and mutual support and respect that we hold dear today.
During the darkest days of the war, the world was reduced to less than a dozen democracies. Today the number stands at over 120!
As the stewards of that "Special Relationship," and inheritors of that democratic legacy, I believe the other function of marking such anniversaries is to look to our history for inspiration, and for guidance for the problems that plague today's world.
Events such as 9/11 and July 7th, as well as countless others around the world, make it clear that extremism and tyranny are on the rise.
Ideologies of hatred and intolerance are threatening the lives of millions, and our open societies and democratic values have been hard-pressed by the needs of security.
It cannot be possible in this context to regard foreign policy as something far away, when every action we take – or fail to take – abroad, has the potential to rebound on our own citizens – and those of our allies.
In the face of such high stakes, some have suggested that the answer is to retreat from our support of people seeking to free their own societies.
But as President Bush said in his second Inaugural speech, ". . . The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. . . . "
What does that mean in the real world of policy? What would we see through Marshall's eyes?
There is perhaps no place in greater need of the spirit of Marshall than Africa – a place torn by civil war and natural disaster. Countries where dictators and disease seem to make common cause in the oppression of the people, and where economic initiatives dry to dust in the stripped landscape.
President Bush has made meeting with African leaders a priority. With little fanfare or recognition, he has met with more of that continent's leaders than any previous U.S. President. He has made a personal effort to engage them in discussion on developing trade and financial markets and to support them in their struggle to establish the rule of law and eliminate corruption in their countries.
He has offered economic support by tripling aid to Africa since the Clinton Administration – and will double it again by 2012.
As a result of these efforts, and those of numerous other countries, including the consistent and determined support of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor here in the UK, real progress has been made on some of the world's chronic and most tragic problems.
If the African agenda is about practical aid and support from the global community, climate change demonstrates the need for an international commitment to the future through good stewardship of the earth today.
The argument of the U.S. administration has always been that the world's environmental problems cannot be solved by hobbling the economies of the developed world. Or by the starving of energy, those countries that are striving to create the economic capacity they need to achieve their own independence.
It is this positive vision of the forces of globalization that we share with the United Kingdom.
Speaking at the recent Lord Mayor's Easter Banquet, the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, spoke passionately, not of the threats from globalization, but of the threats to it – from both a political and a practical perspective.
She named those threats as the growing divide between the rich and poor, not only between countries, but within them as well, and the practical issues of the supply of natural resources and the looming threat of climate change.
Whatever specific policy measures a government takes, climate change challenges our collective commitment to preventing environmental degradation, while allowing for the economic development that will lift millions out of poverty.
There is one last issue that could be seen through the Marshall perspective, and one that certainly cries out for a modern Marshall Plan: the Middle East and Iraq.
I know there is disagreement on these issues, but I believe it brings us full circle and illustrates the need to sustain those who want to build their own democracy.
It tragically brings home the danger to us all of a society where the rule of law is under siege and sectarian violence is doing untold damage to civil society.
The strategic goal of the United States for Iraq remains a unified, democratic and federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself.
That goal is frustrated by the fact that some groups do not want Iraqis to share the benefits – or participate fully – in their society.
But despite intimidation and fear, in 2005, millions of people went to the polls on three separate occasions – far from numbers going down, those numbers went up each time, rising to 75 percent of eligible voters in the 2005 December election.
These dedicated Iraqis are not alone. Their desire for freedom is shared elsewhere in the Middle East, and in other places, once thought of as "off limits" for democracy.
I mentioned earlier in my remarks the expansion of democracy since World War II. But even just since 1974, the number of democracies worldwide has quadrupled. In the past 10 years alone, the number of democracies has almost doubled.
Places like Afghanistan, Kuwait and Lebanon are all seeking to be a part of that tide towards democracy.
At the very heart of the Marshall Plan was a willingness, on all sides, to help the countries most ravaged by war build the institutions that would secure democratic, peaceful and prosperous societies.
Without the determination of the Europeans themselves, all the recovery packages in the world would not have succeeded in bringing them out of their misery.
Is it not right that today we should also try to help other peoples and countries – in Africa – or in the Middle East – who are striving to help themselves in their pursuit of security, prosperity and democracy?
In 1953, George Marshall was the first professional soldier to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. He was honored for his role in the European Recovery Program.
Unlike his Harvard audience, there were protests in Oslo from those who believed that a soldier should not be recognized as an agent of peace.
Marshall understood that concern, but felt that, of all people, he had seen first-hand what he called, ". . . The cost of war in human lives . . . in . . . ledgers whose columns are gravestones. . . ." He was, he said, ". . . moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war. . . ."
As soldier, and as patriot, Marshall knew that with freedom comes hope, but with democracy comes the duty to protect that freedom. He summed up this sentiment for his audience that evening when he said, ". . . Tyranny inevitably must retire before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of freedom . . . ."
George Marshall was born in 1880. As a child, he no doubt heard stories from those who remembered President Lincoln and lived through the terrible experience of the American Civil War, with all its scars.
He went on to serve no fewer than ten Presidents, both as a soldier and as a diplomat, in two world wars, as well as in Korea.
Empires rose and fell, countries were defeated only to rise again, and Europe was divided, while Communism grew by feeding on its own people.
He watched as presidents, politicians, and generals were ground between the rocks of history and time.
He gained understanding from that long experience, but rather than become jaded or disillusioned, he remained firmly rooted in his profound belief that progress for humankind was always possible, and that it could be fashioned by even the most humble of hands – if they could rise to the challenge of helping themselves.
Marshall was no simple soldier. He was a soldier, yes, and a great one, and he is rightly remembered for his military feats, but crucially for his determination to give as much - and more - to the pursuit of a peace not confined by national borders.
He was instrumental in setting freedom on its feet, and from there the people drove not only Europe, but the world, towards a new international order.
The enduring message of General George C. Marshall is one that we would do well to look to today, and I believe he summed it up better than I possibly could in that same Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
He said, ". . . We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress, by the human race. By our actions we should make it clear that such a democracy is a means to a better way of life, together with a better understanding among nations. . . ."
May Marshall's wisdom long continue to be an inspiration and a guide, not only when we face war if we must, but to never stop striving towards peace.
Thank you.
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Speeches, Remarks & Events