Transcript

The Failed : Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Executive Editor, Foreign Affairs, Author, The Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945- 47

Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Head, US and the Americas Programme and Dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House

10 September 2018

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2 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

And it’s wonderful to see so many people here on a Monday afternoon after a lovely weekend. I was saying, it’s a – on Mondays, you know, we all come back and feeling that panic of all the things that need to get started and so, it’s a sign, not only of our Members and their very focused interest on international affairs, on the US, but also, especially of our distinguished guest and the book, which is something that I’m, really, very much looking forward to reading. I’m Leslie Vinjamuri. I’m Head of the US and the Americas Programme here at Chatham House and Dean of the Queen Elizabeth the II Academy. It is an honour to be welcoming you here to Chatham House. Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is the Executive Editor of Foreign Affairs, which is the magazine that I’m sure you’re very well aware of and read, and if not, I would certainly encourage you to. And Daniel is here to speak to us about The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps. It’s based on – actually, if you hold the book up, his new book The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-47, it’s an interesting title, especially right now because I think so many of us look back and think, you know, we certainly don’t think about failure, when we think about the Marshall Plan. So, I have to say, from my vantage point, I’m especially interested to hear what you have to say.

Daniel worked in the State Department during the first Obama Administration when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State from 2009-2012, in a number of different roles, most recently, on the staff – on the Policy Planning staff. So, he brings tremendous policy experience, as well as now, his role at the Council in Foreign Relations and in Foreign Affairs and, clearly, as a distinguished author. So, I’m going to not say too much because I’m mostly curious to hear what you have to say about the book, and then we will open it up and engage in a broader conversation about, perhaps, whether it was a failed Marshall Plan or what the China part of the story is. So, to you. I’ll turn it over to you.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Well, thank you so much, Leslie, and thanks to all of you for being here on a Monday afternoon. It’s great to be in a place where, I think, George Marshall’s name should be nearly as well-known as it is in the United States, maybe more, so given how we, in the US, tend to treat history. But I think that in the UK, like in the US, the China Mission, part of George Marshall’s career tends to be left out of the Archivist’s story, the, kind of, record of his very real achievements. He’s, of course, known for his role as the US Army Chief of Staff during World War II, one of the key Architects of the Allied victory and then later, when he was Secretary of State, as the namesake and key driver of the Marshall Plan. But the argument of my book is that to understand both Marshall and US foreign policy in the 1940s, when the world we still live in was, in many ways, being shaped. We have to understand not just World War II and Marshall’s time as Secretary of State the, kind of, heroic parts of his career, but also, this interlude that comes in- between those two heroic periods: The China Mission ,which is 13 months he spent trying to broker an end to the Civil War in China and prevent a Chinese Communist victory.

This obviously doesn’t fit as well into the, kind of, heroic and triumphant-less narrative that certainly, we in the United States love. Yet, you have here one of the stories of – story of one of the greatest military and diplomatic figures, really in American history, someone that we consider one of the great statesmen of the last century. Taking on one of the hardest ever problems in American foreign policy, for a variety of reasons, and the outcome of this 13-month story, not just shaped Marshall’s thinking about the world, the post-war world and it shaped the way he approached the job as Secretary of State. It also shaped the US- China relationship, in the course of the , and US foreign policy really, up through the Presidents even, so, kind of, see the echoes of this in QAs. 3 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

My story begins in November 1945, at a time when Marshall is really one of the most towering figures, both in the United States and on the global stage. He’s just spent six years, as US Army Chief of Staff. His first day on the job, he took over the US Army the day that Hitler invaded Poland, so as he was preparing for his first day, he was – got a call in the middle of the night and was told to come to the office, earlier than he planned and he, you know, he’d spent that time leading the US Army, really building the modern US Military and become one of the key figures in Allied war planning and war fighting.

He had, at this point, an immense public profile in the United States and globally. There was a draft Marshall movement trying to get him to run for President in 1948. He was Time Magazine’s Man of Year at a time in history when that was a really significant thing in the US, and then, when you read the accounts of the, kind of, great figures of the time, they go into these, sort of, giddy raptures, when talking about Marshall. So, if you read Churchill talking about his experience, working with Marshall during the war, he goes on and on about Marshall’s big brain and this is obviously from someone who has rather high-standards, when it comes to that kind of judgement, and he had started – Churchill had started really, not thinking much of Marshall. He seemed like this, kind of, stoic, plain-spoken, not especially articulate American Mid-Western military man, but over the course of their very close relationship, Churchill would just rave about him, and it was true of Harry Truman as well. Truman, shortly before Marshall’s return, had called him the greatest military leader that had ever lived.

You read these accounts and you hear again and again about this, kind of, presence that Marshall had, this sense of, kind of, calm and authority that would enter the room, as soon as he walked into it, and they talk about this, kind of, great stoic. The great stoic Marshall, is the way he’s remembered. He refused to ever use first names. He even objected when President Roosevelt tried to call him George. He said, “I’d really prefer if you call me General,” which is quite a thing to say to the President of the United States. He had a line that is often quoted, “Whatever feelings I have, I reserve for Mrs Marshall,” which was repeated to, kind of, show you the, kind of, stoic character that Marshall was. But what was really fascinating to me, as I started digging in o Marshall, to look at this particular episode of the China Mission, was seeing how much of that image was something that Marshall had constructed. He, you know, had become this great stoic, but it was something that he – as a character, he had created, in many ways.

There’s a line that I came across from an Officer, who worked alongside Marshall in World War II. Marshall, this Officer said, “Is the greatest actor in the US Army. Everyone thinks that Douglas MacArthur is, but the difference with Marshall is that you never know he’s acting.” So, MacArthur is this, kind of, theatrical and blustering and narcissistic character, and Marshall is this, kind of, stoic, disciplined and self-contained figure. But as you, kind of, look back upon Marshall’s life, you see that this was something that Marshall had really constructed, and if you go back to him in his mid-30s, it was a time when his career was advancing so slowly that he thought he was going to have to retire from the Army ‘cause he wasn’t going anywhere. He was smoking constantly, he was a chain smoker. He had a terrible temper. He cursed all the time.

He, around this time, had two nervous breakdowns. He collapsed in the street, when he was serving in the Philippines, because he was driving himself so hard, and it was at this moment when Marshall said to himself, “I need to change the, kind of, figure I am in the world and I need to interact with the world differently, if I’m ever going to withstand the kinds of pressures that I’ll need to withstand to achieve what I want to achieve.” And I say all that ‘cause it’s, in some ways, analogous to the story of the China Mission and this book. You know, there’s the myth of Marshall of – as Leslie referenced, you know, someone who went from strength-to-strength to achieve these incredible things, kind of, projected American strength and leadership and ambition, in a post-War period, especially. But the story of the China Mission really cuts against that myth of Marshall and the myth of, you know, really the greatest generation and the wise 4 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

men that we really cling to in the United States, and what you get here is not a story of strength and power and ambition and success, but of restraint and failure in trying to, kind of, learn from it and take away from it something valuable, which you see Marshall then going on to do in Western Europe. So, the whole arc of this is fascinating, what kept me going in about five years of research and writing was the way in which the period, right after World War II, has this incredible unformed feel. You know, we think about, kind of, World War II giving way to the Cold War, but you see this moment in 1945, when the figures of the time were really trying to figure out what the world looks like, what kind of system they’re entering. And in this very human way, you get these figures, kind of, sitting across tables from one another or playing cards or having drinks and hashing out these arguments about what world they’re entering. So, there’s something very, very human about the story that I tried to tell in this book.

But I want to focus today, on three elements that really struck me, as I learned about the story and sketched out the story that I think are all, in different ways, relevant to the way we think about the world today. So, the first thing that was quite striking, and looking at this period right after World War II, is just how much the problem of China and instability in China threatened the whole vision of the post-war world. That the Americans, especially, but in many ways, the Allies had together carried through World War II, and this is how Marshall gets – ends up on this mission in the first place. So, November 1945 Marshall is this revered character, has led the Army for six years. He’s also exhausted, for reasons you can understand, and all he wants to do is retire. He has a house in the countryside in Virginia, an hour outside of Washington. His wife, Katherine, had been planning vacations for them, so he finally prevails on President Truman to allow him to retire, the day after his retirement ceremony in the Pentagon, which is a new building at that point.

They drive to Leesburg Virginia, where this house is, and Marshall, you know, stands and contemplates his freedom on the lawn, walks through the front door with Katherine, and then almost immediately the phone rings, within an hour of his entering the house, and it’s President Truman on the line and Truman says to Marshall, “I have one last little favour I need to ask before you go off on your retirement. Just one; a couple of months I need you to do one little thing for me and then you really have your freedom,” and Katherine is furious. His wife is furious ‘cause she knows her husband is not the kind of man who will ever say no to a request from the President. A sense of duty will not allow him to, but what Truman sees, as he contemplates the post-war world and looks at China, is an unstable China. A China, kind of, at the precipice of a new Civil War that really undermines the whole vision of how the post-war piece is going to work.

You know, we talk about wicked problems in American foreign policy today, China’s the wicked problem of its time, it kind of – you look at any possible course and it has these, kind of, disastrous downsides, and so Truman looks at this. Says, you know, “China’s supposed to be one of the big four powers. It’s going to be one of the four Policemen which, along with the UK and the United States and the , are going to keep this peace. It’s the foundation, it’s one of the original members of the UN Security Council, it’s supposed to be a bridge between the US and Soviets in Asia. It’s really one of the pillars of this post- war world.” But the problem is that it’s not really a modern, great power at the time. It doesn’t have any of the attributes of a great power. It’s really much close to a failed state.

You have a Central Government, a Nationalist Government led by Chiang Kai-shek, which is trying to slowly re-establish control over the Chinese mainland, much of which had been very brutally occupied with the Japanese, through much of the proceeding decade. Then you have the Communists, who are in the North West, but by now, who are trying to challenge Chiang in the Nationalists for control of China, and this doesn’t just have implications for China. It is happening at a time when Americans are starting to worry about the threat of Soviet Communism spreading and a time when China’s really supposed to be 5 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

playing this different role. So, Truman says to Marshall, “I need you to go to China, six – after you’ve been doing the job of Army Chief of Staff for six years. I need you to broker a peace between the Nationalists and Communists. I need you to lay the groundwork for a Chinese democracy and make sure that China is going to be an ally to the United States. I think it’s only going to take you a couple of months and then you can come back and go on to retirement.” Of course, it takes much longer than that. It takes 13 months for Marshall to figure out that this mission cannot work, but it also really launches the next period of Marshall’s career. He goes on from this job to become Secretary of State. It’s when he’s on this mission that Truman asks him to become Secretary of State and he becomes Secretary of Defence, subsequently. So, instead of being this last little hiccup, before his retirement, it really starts, in some ways, the most heroic phase, the most interesting phase in Marshall’s career.

So, the second thing that was really striking, in tracing this story, is how swept up Marshall became in the possibilities of his mission, as he gets to China and starts to try to do what Truman has charged him with doing. You know ,he’s a pretty hardheaded guy, but he throws himself into it. He’s very taken with the sense of duty and knows that he will do whatever he can to follow through on the mission that Truman has given him. One interesting note I should mention, since I’m here. He’s flying in a plane, a C54 that the US had given to Churchill, for Churchill’s use during World War II, so it’d been, kind of, outfitted in Churchillian-style and then sent back to the US and Marshall was travelling around war-torn China in this C54 that Churchill had used. So, he takes this trip from the US to mainland China. It takes six days at that time to, kind of, hop from island-to-island to get there and when he arrives he, in a very – way that says a lot about Marshall’s character, he just listens.

He meets with this incredible array of characters, from, you know, Intelligence Officers and Diplomats of various Governments, to the key Chinese players, including Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist Leader and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, Madam Chiang, who is, in her own right, this incredibly charismatic brilliant figure, who’s a very important part of the story. He meets Zhou Enlai, who’s the key Communist figure in the Chinese Capital in Tianjin, which is the wartime capital at that point, and Marshall listens and starts to think about the problem and realises that he has a, kind of, key challenge to solve.

The Communists say, “We’re willing to lay down our weapons to give up the fight in the Civil War, as long as we get a role in Government,” and the Nationalists say, in turn, “We’re willing to give you a role in Government, if only you lay down your weapons.” So, Marshall has a, kind of, sequencing problem and he creates a, kind of, three-sided triangular diplomacy, to try to overcome this problem. The need to mediate this – the Civil War, and it’s very familiar, you know, to any of us who’ve worked in the US foreign policy,. Subsequently, it’s the kind of mediation that we’ve tried to do many times since, and I think generally failed, but Marshall’s really trying to do it for the first time, in the post-war period. And what’s really quite remarkable is, you look at the early months of 1946, as Marshall’s been there for a few months, is that he seems to be pulling it off. He has stolen, looking at the situation, saying, “Look, Marshall should be treated as [inaudible – 15:57] as of now. Marshall should be treated as a representative of the international community. He is delivering a message from all of us and we expect you to fall along and do whatever he asks.” Chiang looks at Marshall and says, “I have to really take part in this diplomacy, even if I don’t really trust the Communists to follow through on whatever they agree to.”

So, within a few months, you see, all of a sudden, a ceasefire in this Civil War that’s been going on for many years. You see an agreement to merge Nationalist and Communist Armies with Marshall, kind of, plotting out in detail exactly how this will work. And you even have the – a plan for a new Chinese democracy that’s going to have both of these powers and a new democratic Government, and Marshall goes so far as to hand Chiang Kai-shek secretly, a draft Bill of Rights that he thinks the Chinese should adopt, as the kind of basis for this new Government, and in this time, Marshall, who again, is not someone 6 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

who is generally, you know, gen – he’s a generally sceptical character. You start to see him behaving a bit like American policymakers did in the run-up to Iraq. He gets, kind of, taken up with this evangelising fervour for democracy and he starts, you know, kind of lecturing the Chinese about the lessons of baseball and what ‘freedom of assembly’ means.

He goes to the Director, Frank Capra, who was about to direct a movie called It’s a Wonderful Life and asks him to make a series of instructional videos for the Chinese, teaching them how democracy works and you, kind of, cringe, as you read all this, but it really is this moment when people on all sides of this think that there might just be this alternate future, when Mao looks at the pressures on him and says, “Our only path forward is political,” when Stalin believes that Mao is so unlikely to win that they should really just go along with what Marshall is telling them. And there’s this kind of crowning moment when Marshall was travelling around war-torn China and he’s going from, kind of, stop-to-stop and informing the Commanders on the ground of the peace-forming future and what the path looks like, and in the culminating of visit of this trip, he goes to a place called the Yen’an, which is the – which is Mao’s revolutionary headquarters, and it’s this really amazingly desolate place where the Communist leaders live in caves that are in the hillside and have been, kind of, plotting far from places where enemy troops can reach because of the geography around them. And Marshall arrives there and the C54 and has this amazing 24 hours where he and Mao talk about the future of friendship and peace, and what Mao and Zhou Enlai and the other Communist leaders were going to do in this Communist Government, and Marshall comes away from this saying, “I think we’ve really pulled this off.” But in this, kind of, amazing, historical coincidence that same day, and March 5th 1946 that Marshall and Mao are sitting there talking about this future of peace and, kind of, global comedy, the Communists are also watching something else that is going on, many thousands of miles away.

That same day, Churchill is in Fulton Missouri, giving a speech about the Iron Curtain that is falling between the Western and Communist worlds, and it’s right at this moment, when the Cold War is starting and it’s not just the Churchill speech, it’s this whole series of events that start to convince decisionmakers that, maybe, the world they’re entering is not the world of, you know, allied peace and the four Policemen keeping – mediating disputes and keeping the peace globally that they had talked about. Maybe there’s something else coming, so both Mao in the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists start to think that maybe what’s happening is China is not an example of global comedy, working to mediate a national dispute. It’s actually where the first battle of World War III’s really going to play out. They both think that they are going to get support from their backers. Mao thinks he’ll get support from Stalin, Chiang thinks he’ll get support from the Americans and so, it’s really worth it fighting to the death and from there, things really come apart, which is, you know, the story of the second-half of the book.

Then the last thing I’d point out, before getting into questions is, just how much this shaped both the way Marshall thought about the world, but also, the US-China relationship in the shape of the Cold War, going forward. And there’re, kind of, two key insights that Marshall pulls from this that I think were really, really consequential in post-war American foreign policy. So, Truman sees Marshall playing Diplomat, a very different role than the one he had during World War II. He’d been an Army man for decades, for almost five decades. Truman sees him at work and asks Marshall to become Secretary of State. So, Marshall finally gives up on the China Mission, in the beginning of 1947, and goes almost straight from there to – back to Washington and takes one week off in Honolulu with Katherine and becomes Secretary of State and suddenly looks at this whole world where there’s break – a breakdown in the agreements with the war. There’s a growing sense of, you know, the Communist menace everywhere and he, after focusing 16 hours a day on China for a year, starts to, kind of, contend with this new world he’s entering, and one part of his response is the Marshall Plan. It’s not even six months later, it’s June 5th 1947 that he stands 7 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

up in Harvard, on Graduation Day, and gives the first statement of what would, ultimately, become the Marshall Plan.

If you track his thinking that led to that moment, he’s taking the insights that he was trying to deploy, when he was on his China Mission, and applying them to a different situation. It’s in China that he starts to think about how foreign policy needs to address not just the usual, kind of, great power concerns, but also, the, kind of, everyday needs of people in other countries. How it needs to have the, kind of, humanitarian component and address poverty, hunger and desperation and chaos as he puts it, when he speaks at Harvard, which is exactly what he starts to see, as he’s in China, and realises that the fundamental problem is not just ideology, but also, the way that these other factors, these more, kind of, mundane factors, in some ways, really drive events. So, you see in the way he talks about the Marshall Plan and the kind of evolving containment doctrine, all the things he was talking about in China, he used snippets of the same language and can really trace his thinking from China to the US response in – globally, in a perfect world.

But the second, the kind of flipside of this is that Marshall comes to have this real sense of restraint when it comes to what American power can do in China, specifically. So, when he leaves, over the next two years, two and a half years, things really turn against the Nationalists in the Civil War, and Mao comes closer and closer to victory and finally, the People’s Republic is declared on October 1st 1949. In that period in the United States, there was this growing and increasingly, rancorous debate about what the US should do to stop Communism in China, and you see proposals that to an American eye, look a lot like what would be proposed in Vietnam, a decade and a half later. So, there are proposals to have Douglas MacArthur take over Chinese armies and lead them. You have proposals to add 10,000 or 20,000 more Advisors and send them into combat against the Communists with the Nationalist Chinese troops. You have various plans that get discussed in the National Security Council and military circles in Washington, and Marshall, having spent his time trying to contend with the problem in China, is a real sceptic, as someone who really sets out to block that, kind of, creeping American intervention in the , and that has huge consequences, not just for the course of that War, but is also, one of the most powerful employees in this political events in American politics, over the next decade and a half.

So, when the Communists win in 1949, the immediate question, in the United States is, who lost China? And it’s something that is almost a punchline now, in certain ways, because the notion that China wanted the United States to lose, is fairly farfetched, but through the 1950s, and even the subsequent decades, there was a real force in American politics that sought to blame the Democrats, and Marshall and Truman and Dean Acheson, specifically, for having given up China to Communism. And what that led to was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the first speech where Joseph McCarthy, a US Senator, started to talk about, ‘a conspiracy, so immense and infamy so black’ which became the kind of, one of the slogans of McCarthyism seeking out, you know, Communist spies everywhere in the United States. That speech was an attack on Marshall, where McCarthy talked about, in a large part, the China mission and what Marshall had done or not done to keep China from going over to Communism, and that become a very powerful force in American politics in the 1950s, but into the 1960s, when the Vietnam debate started, this was very front and centre in the minds of the decisionmakers and the Kennedy and Johnson administration.

So, they would say, you know, “We can’t lose Vietnam, look what happened to the guys who lost China, look at the political reaction.” So, you know, there are these, kind of, amazing quotes from LBJ especially where he’ll say things like, and I apologise for the language, but it’s hard to avoid it with Johnson, you know, “What happened to those guys who lost China is going to be chicken shit compared to what happens to us if we lose Vietnam.” So, there are moments when he is saying, “Let’s, you know, send 50,000 more troops. I don’t think it’s going to work, but we just can’t avoid the political consequences if 8 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Vietnam ends up falling to the Communists,” and even into, you know, the 1980s, as I was, kind of, tracking these debates about intervention, US intervention in Civil Wars and elsewhere. In 1980, there were debates about Central America and people would still refer back to the loss of China and the failure of intervening in China, as a reason to intervene in El Salvador or Guatemala or Nicaragua. So, it cast this very, very long shadow over the subsequent years of American foreign policy, and I think, in some ways, it’s even shaped the way we think about these questions today, probably for the [inaudible – 25:51]. So, I will leave it there, but then, happy to talk about any elements of the story. There’s a lot of, kind of, human richness and narrative drama to it, but also, about the implications for today or anything else. So, thank you so much.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Thank you [applause]. I should say, and I probably should’ve said at the outset, that this is on the record. This is not under the Chatham House Rule, in large part, because it’s a published book, based on a published book. A fascinating, actually, conversa – discussion and it does – it certainly makes me want to read the book even more than I already did and I mean that quite genuinely. I want to start with a couple of questions and then we’ll open it up very quickly to the audience and I guess, I mean, you’ve, sort of, you know, intimated your answers to this first question. But how – it was clearly something that was picked up and used for political purposes to initially blame the Democrats and then, it carries on, you know, who lost China? But how consequential do you think Marshall was? Or how consequential would anybody have been? I mean, do you think that there was a lot of scope? I mean, at one point, you seemed quite cynical that the US could’ve done much – but, you know, you looked at this clearly very carefully and so, in your view, you know, there are these moments in history. We tend to associate them with the end of major wars or the end of the Cold War, or possibly post-2008, we talk about this current moment as a moment of disruption, but that’s really, I think, something quite different.

Where there’s a lot of – where we tend to think there’s a lot of latitude for things being decided on, for new institutional configurations to be set up and Historians, in particular, tend to see choices as really consequential. But a lot of people think, no, you know, things are bound to be one way or the other, Political Scientists, for example. But in your view, you know, how consequential was the individual man in this case? And also, related to that, is, you know, when did that narrative stop having as much traction? I mean, you said at the very end, the who lost China thing, maybe there is even some resonance of it today but, really, in terms of the more specific historical story, when did that cease?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

So, on the first question, you know, I think the counter-factuals are really kind of rich and fascinating in this case, but the core story of Marshall’s time in China, I think is, in many ways, a vote for the Political Scientist, you can say, in that it’s this, kind of, great man, one of the kind of greatest of the great men in this figure of the greatest generation and the wise men in American History, where it seemed to be just, kind of, giants striding the Earth. We, in US foreign policy circles, look back on them as a, kind of, you know, golden age of American policymaking, but the story of Marshall is the, kind of, commanding figure, very committed figure, brilliant, in many ways. This is not a, kind of, attempt to take down Marshall and a revisionist account, but going and learning what could not be done. It was, kind of, him learning about the greater forces at play in this really historical transformation underway in China and, you know, having some sense that if the Nationalist Government reformed in certain ways, perhaps it could change if it got the economy under control, in certain ways, perhaps the course could change, but that the mere application of the will and power and command of the great man, was not enough to change the historical, to override the historical forces at play on the ground in China. 9 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Where I do think Marshall and the story of this does make a real difference in that if he had said, you know, “Sorry, President Truman, I’m too – I’m exhausted, I’m not going to go on this mission.” In those post-war debates, and when Marshall was Secretary of State from 1947-1949 as American policymakers were trying to figure out what to do about the impending Communist victory in China, had Marshall not been there, had he not had the experience of the China mission and had the, kind of, really direct understanding of the forces at play, you could imagine that intervention really, kind of, creeping, in a way, that did not because Marshall stopped it from doing so. So, you know, there was never a plan to put a million troops on the ground in China, but Marshall looked at it and said, “If we commit 10,000 troops or 20,000 Advisors, if we put Douglas McArthur in charge of Chinese armies, we’re going to start making commitments that are going to, themselves, lead to other commitments.” So, it’s the, kind of, slippery slope argument about intervention, and I do think there’s a real chance of that having happened, had Marshall not been really central to the debates, and the Truman Administration and I do not believe that would’ve stopped Mao from winning ultimately, in China, but it would’ve, certainly, changed the course of the Cold War and changed the course of US power.

One thing that Marshall thought a bit about, because he was a military man and had a real sense of needing to connect means to ends in American foreign policy in a way that I think we Diplomats do not oftentimes. He looked at what was required in all of these different theatres around the world, as the Cold War was starting and said, “We have pretty limited means. We have an American public that is not at all convinced that we should be spending money on the rest of the world,” you know, 400,000 people just died in World War II, many of them thought they were going and solving other people’s problems, not dealing with something that the United States really needed to care about, you know, there was a kind of an America First moment in the post-World War II period as well. And he said, “I think that we need to be very, very thoughtful about where we invest our power,” I mean, that’s both financial, it’s military and that’s when he weighed the possibilities in Asia against the possibilities in Western Europe and said, “Western Europe is the place where I see partners who are willing to take the reins in ways that we want them to and need them to. I see a, kind of, institutional basis for democratic development that is just not in place in a society like China, at this point, and I see a place where a Soviet, you know, a Soviet takeover of Western Europe really would threaten the United States in an existential way. A Soviet victory in China or a Communist victory in China would not be the same kind of threat.” So, he made, you know, weighed these different priorities and came out thinking that the Marshall Plan was really the place to invest American resources and those were, you know, those skipped. There was a large investment, I think, in today’s – as a percentage of GDP today, it’d be about a trillion dollars, over about five years, and he saw that as the place to really spend money.

And then, to your second question about the kind of echoes of this in policy debates going forward, so the last, kind of, explicit references that I was seeing to it, were in the early 1980s. So, if you look at Jean Kirkpatrick, kind of, one of the original neo-Conservatives who wrote the very famous article called Dictatorships and Double standards, and she wrote it in 1979, but she then became the Ambassador of United Nations under Reagan and an advocate of American intervention in Central America. She has a note about the loss of China in that piece and so, I think, really, up until its intervention debates, there was this explicit reference to – and people who really, kind of, remembered the politics of the 50s and 60s and the kind of incredible force that, who lost China had? But, you know, as I look at debates that we have now, we had a who lost a Iraq debate during the Obama Administration, after ISIS took over much of Iraqi territory? There was this whole debate, in US policy circles, about whether it was the original centre of the war and there was no way to turn it around, or if the Obama Administration hadn’t withdrawn several thousand US troops, whether that would’ve changed it, and I think that frame and the 10 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

notion that America, you know, could lose something that that kind of change would – were downed on us in that way, really does go back to this moment, and I’m not sure when we’ll get out of it, in some ways.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Okay, I’m going to open it up. If you say your name and ask your question, if you’d like to go first.

Nick Harrison

Nick Harrison, I’m a Member here at Chatham House. You mentioned that both Mao and Chiang seemed to be heading towards a compromise and then, went their own way. Who – essentially, who went first and what gave them the indication that they would get the backing from their respective Cold War paymasters?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

It’s a great question. So, there’s, kind of, you know, got a question of whether it could’ve worked and how wrong – I think I, kind of, look at it on two different levels. One is, on the, you know, kind of, on the ground in China. Both sides felt pressure, in late 1945 and early 1946, to go along with Marshall’s mediation to go forward with a Coalition Governments with the Nationalists, in the lead. There were a lot of unsettled issues underlying and fundamental disagreements about what China should look like, how exactly – you know, if the Communist were going to put down their arms, how exactly that would proceed. So, there was this, you know, kind of high-level agreement that left a lot of the really hardest questions unsolved. So, you know, you could look at it and say, “This was all taken care of in February of 1946,” but when you saw how much still had to be determined, it was clear that there something Pollyanna-ish about that. But the second level is the international structural question and in 1945 into early 1946, there is more of an effort, on the part of the outside powers, especially the US and the Soviet Union, to find some kind of co-operative arrangement in these other theatres, and that is at the point that Stalin is saying to Mao, “Look, you can’t win. You have a peasant army that’s going to get destroyed by the Nationalists, with all their, you know, US supplied weapons and even Soviet supplied weapons, from World War II.” The Americans saying to Chiang Kai-shek, “Look, you’ve got to play along, we’re not going to come and save you. We don’t think you can win either, so your best course is to find some peaceful arrangement.”

They both start to see the, kind of, signs of the Cold War coming, really, you know, kind of, February/March 1946 Stalin gives his famous speech on February 9th 1946, which then leads to George Kennan’s long telegram back to Washington, blanking out America and thinking about the Cold War, that’s getting passed around American circles. You start to see the beginnings of what becomes known as Domino Theory, you know, later in the Cold War, where American Planners and Politicians start to talk about, you know, the series of countries falling into Communism in Asia. So, somewhat comically, they keep trying to come up with the right analogy, so you’ll read these passages from Spring of 1946 of people saying, you know, “Communism is like a giant snowball and if it rolls down the hill into China, it’s going to pick-up pace and take out the rest of Asia,” or, one Congressman called it, like a baseball game and if Communism gets to first in China, it’s going to get to second in India, third in Africa and then hit a home- run in the United States. And you, kind of, want to shake them and say, “I think dominos is the analogy you’re looking for here,” but they, you know, were kind of straining to get the right analogy. And both Mao, you know, Mao notices Churchill’s speech, the signals from Stalin really start to change, in early 1946, and then the Chiang and the Nationalists are starting to hear from their allies in Washington, especially that thinking is really changing. That there’s this new hostility on the global level and so, they too decide that they don’t really need to play long with Marshall in the same way. 11 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

And one interesting detail that I think was actually quite consequential in Chiang’s thinking, Marshall, before he left, had a meeting in the Oval Office with Present Truman and Marshall, because he’s always thinking through, kind of, next steps and plans Bs, says to Truman, “Okay, I understand I’m supposed to sit down with them and say they have to stop fighting and they have to join the same Government. What if that doesn’t work? And, specifically, what if the Communists, sort of, play along, but our allies and our partners, the Nationalists, don’t, what do I do then? Can I really say to the Nationalists that we’re going to fully withdraw support, we’re not going to back them?” And Truman said, “Don’t – like, don’t worry about it, we’ll deal with it later. You’ll figure this out,” and Marshalls says, “No, no, no, I really want to understand what kind of leverage I actually have. Am I bluffing or can I really withdraw support?” Truman says, “You know, ultimately, we’re not going to fully withdraw support. We’re never going to shift our support to the other side.” Marshall thinks that’s a secret conversation that they’re having. Somehow, the detail of it leaks and it makes its way back to Chiang and he hears, as he’s sitting in China, look, the President said to Marshall about, like, “We’re never going to fully withdraw support.” And so, when Chiang says, to people around him, “Look, Marshall’s going to tell us – telling us one thing, but I know the American’s are going to come around.” He has pretty good reason for thinking that.

Now, in terms of your question about who, kind of, starts to slip first? Marshall would always say that at the beginning, he thought the Communists were more committed to the process, and there is some truth to that because the pressure from Stalin was so strong. But there was also a successful attempt by the Communists to persuade Marshall of that, and they were able to do that, in part, because he could never figure out how to crack their communications. They had more primitive communications when Zhou Enlai and Mao would communicate. They were much more careful than the Nationalists were. So, Marshall would get these reports from his cryptographers and his intel people saying, you know, “Chiang Kai-shek told you he’s going to do – he’s going to, you know, not fight in this place, but we’ve just overheard a conversation or we just, you know, intercepted a message from him to one of his Commanders, telling them to fight, despite what he told you.” We can never get the same messages from the Communists, so Marshall, for a while, is taken with this idea that they’re playing along, in better faith than the Nationalists. But really, both sides start to walk back on their commitments around the same time in the spring and so, you know, you kind of – you can probably, kind of, sketch out the game theory of this. They both say, “Well, you know, he’s not – the Communists are not laying down their weapons there, so I’m not going to do this thing that I promised to do on the political side.” They’re kind of saying, “We’re not going to lay down our weapons here ‘cause they didn’t give us the political concession that we asked for.” And so, the whole thing that Marshall kind of carefully constructed, for the first couple of months, all those agreements kind of cascade down, very quickly after that.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Very good. Next question from the gentleman here.

Peter Eaford

If you could say a little bit more about…

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

If you say who you are?

12 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Peter Eaford

Oh, sorry, yes. Peter Eaford, British Army. I’m in the Permanent Joint Headquarters up in Northwood, just up the road. Could you say a little bit more about when President Truman, and I don’t know if the right word is calls the General back or invites him back to be the Secretary of State, what do the American public think of him coming back? Oh, he’s a failure or was there spin involved or did the public understand it was such a difficult situation, he did better than anybody could’ve done, you know, what was that sort of feeling when he came back?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

It’s a great question. He was still – well, probably, a bit of background first. There’d been the series of American emissaries, through World War II to China, who had tried, in various ways, to crack the China situation. There’d been a General named Joseph Stilwell, a wonderful book by Barbara Tuchman called Stilwell and the American Experience in China, who had these volcanic fights with Chiang Kai-shek about strategy in World War II. There’d been man named Patrick Hurley, within the envoy, right before Marshall who had, again, failed to find a peace agreement. So, there was a kind of record of failure that caused the public, at first, to give Marshall a bit of a palace. He had, you know, a sterling reputation and when he first returns, the message is, you know, he tried and it didn’t work. But people really hadn’t fully contended with the implications of that, so you know, people could accept that there would be a Civil War in China and that America couldn’t stop it.

People had a harder time accepting that that could lead to a Communist victory in China. So, it was really when people were forced to confront that, that the opinion started to turn on Marshall. When he became Secretary of State, he was confirmed, I think, 98 to zero, so there was no real political backlash, immediately, but by 1950, when he becomes Secretary of Defence, he’s called up to return once again, during the , there’s a very fierce fight over his confirmation, and Marshall even says to Truman, Truman when he interrupts Marshall’s retirement for the second time, he drives down to his house at Leesburg actually. I guess, it’s a more courteous way of doing it than a phone call, and knocks on his door and says, “I really need you to come back again.” Marshall says to him, “Do you understand that I’ve become a more controversial figure than I was in 1945 or 1947? This is not going to be a smooth or straightforward thing.” And he is right. When there’s a debate about his nomination, in Congress in 1950, during the Korean War, that’s when the, kind of, McCarthy, the McCarthyite signals start to come and that’s when McCarthy starts to attack Marshall and others around him start to attack Marshall, and that became so powerful that even Marshall’s protegee, Dwight Eisenhower, would not defend him.

So, Eisenhower had been, kind of, plucked out of the ranks by Marshall, really made by Marshall. He saw him as a, sort of, father figure. Eisenhower, of course, commands the D-Day invasion, on Marshall’s request, and Marshall, in some ways, had wanted to take over the command, but Eisenhower – FDR would not let him. So, Eisenhower really owes his whole career to Marshall, runs for President, as a Republican in 1952, really during, as McCarthyism is still gaining steam. He’s going to Wisconsin, in Joseph McCarthy’s home state, to campaign and he says, “I should really, you know, say something to defend Marshall, this man I look to as a father, against the charges from Joseph McCarthy,” and his Political Advisors say, “You can’t do it. You just cannot take that risk.” So, he goes on stage, embraces Joseph McCarthy, lets McCarthy trash Marshall, through the 1952 Election, and just doesn’t think that he can afford to – that it’d be political suicide to defend Marshall, at that point and, you know, Marshall, because he’s this kind of man, is totally forgiving. He says, “Look, you know, politics is a dirty business. You did what you had to do. I’d rather have you in that job than many other people, so don’t worry about it.” But a lot of other people, including Harry Truman and Katherine Marshall, were much angrier at 13 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Eisenhower, for many years after that, and Truman really never forgave Eisenhower for having sold out Marshall, as he saw it.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

More questions. I have one that I will interject, while we are waiting for some more questions from the audience, and that is about the broader thinking on the region. There’s been some, and I’m sure you’re aware of it, you know, some thinking coming from a number of eminent scholars of Europe and Asia that look at, you know, America’s strategy, with respect to Europe post-World War II and America’s strategy, with respect to Asia, and you know, can talk about the fact that America never really made any effort to think about the region as a collective or to build it up. And I’m wondering, in Marshall’s, you know, this is very early, right, in some ways, that proceeds the thinking on America supporting regionalism in Europe, but was there any thinking, beyond China, you know, sort of, as he could see that the Communists were, you know, winning out, was there any thinking about, you know, what to do to form a, sort of, Liberal or Democratic or not-Communist bulwark to contain China, or was it just, you know, bilateralism and was that even at the point of debate?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

So, the – at the regionals and I think certainly a bit later, that the true, kind of, Asian regional vision, which never really [inaudible – 46:28] in the way…

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Well, much of it, but was it ever even there, as a point of…?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

So, at the outset, China was seen as the, kind of, you know, regional Policeman in Asia. So, Japan is, of course, devastated, where there’s occupation in Korea, there’s, kind of, a process of decolonisation just starting in much of South East Asia and China is seen as our kind of regional partner, who is going to both help keep the regional peace, but also be the, kind of, economic engine of Asia, and as we look at, kind of, you know, Japanese reconstruction in the 1940s, China is seen as the, kind of, key to all of that. That, then, shifts as military planners start to contend with what a Communist victory in China will look like and all of a sudden, Japan takes on much greater importance than it had before that. All of a sudden, Korea takes on greater importance. The Philippines takes on great importance. So, the notion of a, kind of, you know, outer perimeter to double block this further spread of Soviet power in Asia, really starts to take shape in, kind of, 1948/1949 and as, you know, if you look at the planning that’s happening in the US Military in 48/49, you know, they will – they start ranking countries in the region by importance. And China, all of a sudden, starts to fall down the list and Japan and Korea start to rise higher and, you know, this is to the great chagrin of the Chinese, of course, but when they look at how they’re going to distribute resources and military assistance and troops, all of a sudden, that outer perimeter becomes much more important.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

But still thinking bilaterally, right?

14 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Still thinking quite bilaterally, yeah.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

You know, you move from one to the next, but you never really think, there’s never a sense of the region as a collective?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Yeah, and I think that really comes in the 1950s that it, you know, the notion of an Asian counterpart to NATO starts to take shape. It never flourishes in the same way, but I don’t – so, it’s an interesting question, I do not think there was the same kind of vision at this point.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Other questions? From the gentleman back here and then the lady in the front.

John Sergeant

And thank you. I must confess that I…

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Could you say who you are?

John Sergeant

Sorry, John Sergeant, Member of Chatham House. I confess, I lost you, just for a little bit, when you talked about Frank Capra because I had this vivid image of James Stewart playing this gentleman. I can’t think of a better person who would fit the bill. But my question is, when Marshall came back and then was working on Europe, what were the ways in which his Asian experience changed the way that he dealt with Europe? I mean, in particular, I – my reading of the situation is that he was really very tough on the UK and there was a very strong feeling, in America at the time, to really dismantle that, God damn Empire once and for all, and I wondered, to what extent, he was part of that idea?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

So, there had been as, I’m sure, all of you know, you know, these volcanic fights about the British presence in Asia, especially, the future of the British Empire through World War II and Marshall, like FDR, pushed very hard to force Churchill to give up the Chinese presence in much of China. And he saw that as really a credit or sign of American good faith in China, as he went into the mission, the notion that the US had really fought for Chinese sovereignty for, kind of, China as a great power, over the objections of the UK and other European powers that it had this Imperial presence for much of the previous Century. Really, he took as a sign of, kind of, American integrity, you know, Churchill during World War II, was kind of baffled, and rightly so, in many ways, by the American obsession with China as this great power. There’s this great line, when he comes back from one of his – from a trip to the US, he says, “If I can summarise in one word what I learned in the United States, it is China,” so it’s just all anyone would talk to him about 15 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

and he would say, “I just don’t see how this becomes the fourth great Policeman in the way that FDR thinks.”

Going into – now, flipping forward into the Marshall’s period, as Secretary of State, I think there are kind of two, the two key ways that this influences his thinking about the global picture and Western Europe. One is, he really starts to think about the significance of economics and humanitarian issues, as a part of US foreign policy. So, when he starts to talk about the Marshall Plan and why it’s in the US interest, it’s very much a reflection of what he learns about why Communism succeeds. Why civil wars break out that he is exposed to when he’s in China. When he starts to try to understand what exactly is happening on the ground here and then he looks at some more threats and some more anxieties about Western Europe and realises that that, kind of, economic investment and that, kind of, investment in economic reconstruction is really, needs to be at the centrepiece of American foreign policy. And then, the second part of it is his sense of restraint when it comes to what should be done in China. It’s a moment when there’s a debate about whether it makes sense to focus resources on Western Europe or on China. There are people who believe that it should be an Asia First policy and because of his scepticism borne of this mission, he is one of the key advocates to the kind of Europe First approach at that point.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Hmmm, and just here.

Ann Sachs

Thank you, and Ann Sachs, a Member of Chatham House. I just wondered if you had any views on what effect ‘the failure’ of the Marshall mission to China had on China’s attitude to the Korean War and the way it, in effect, fought the Americans?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

It’s a real interesting question and I think some of this, you know, some day, all of these archives will open and there’ll be fascinating books written about the, kind of – all the texture of those decisions on the Chinese side during that period. But one thing that really shaped both Stalin’s thinking and Mao’s thinking as the Korean War started, was the United States is not going to intervene in Asia. They didn’t intervene in China. They ultimately, and despite their supposed ambitions and supposed objectives for China in a post-war period, chose not to intervene. That is a sign that they’re not going to intervene in Korea and so, Stalin gives Kim Ill-Sung the green light to attack , shortly after the Chinese Revolution.

In part, because he thinks he has a better understanding of American decision-making. Of course, the – in some ways, the effect on US decision-making is the exact opposite because China has been – gone Communist. It becomes all the more important to make sure that South Korea survives, as an American ally and so, it actually drives intervention in the Korean War, rather than restraint. But both Mao and Stalin look at the US, after this period and say, “We can afford to let Kim Il-Sung attack” because the Americans are just not going to intervene and, you know, Mao, as he – as the Chinese intervene in the Chinese – in the Korean Civil War and in the Korean War at this point is, you know, a very – and it’s, kind of, this moment of incredible revolutionary euphoria, and he’s certain that he can, kind of, defeat the US invaders, Stalin is, kind of, a bit taken of with that too, after having been a real, kind of, sceptic of Mao’s capabilities and a sceptic of revolution and these peasant societies in Asia. He, all of a sudden, sees things very differently. 16 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Just here.

Scott Brody

Scott Brody. Colonel Peter’s my boss, so I’d better make this a good question. I wonder what is – it’s about the American system of Government, political culture that sees all these retired military leaders become these Statesmen and at the heart of Government, foreign policy, you know, from the Second World II, if not before, up to the likes of Mattis, the current White House Chief of Staff, etc.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

It’s a question that I have thought a lot about, in the last years, especially. I mean, I’m sure you have sometimes, so, you know, there’s this refrain in American foreign policy circles about the adults in the room that will, you know, save mainstream foreign policy from the disruptions or parodies of Trump and the less traditional figures around him. I mean, that really centres on this notion that there is a model of military leadership that is distinct from what the rest of us do in the political sphere. It’s, kind of seen, as free [inaudible – 55:43] in a way. Marshall was, kind of, the ultimate embodiment of that and he did in fact, that he never, never voted. He was very, very quick to bat down any suggestion that he would ever get involved in politics. He had another great Marshall line that I love. He would say, “My mother was a Democrat, my father was a Republican and I’m an Episcopalian,” anytime someone asked him about his political – who he supported politically. So, he worked very hard to, kind of, cultivate this image of the army man, who rose above the petty squabbles of politics. Who’s tried very, very hard to stay out of them and it was an image that, you know, Americans really loved and that gave us the sense that it’s still true today that the military leaders would have some way of solving problems that the rest of us wouldn’t have access to. They would approach it with a sense of duty and putting nation first that would not be true of the, kind of, political hacks doing things elsewhere and, you know, it really fed into the way we talked about John Kelly and Jim Mattis and General McMaster, when he was National Security Advisor. I think, in some ways, you know, Mattis quite consciously models himself on General Marshall. He is the only Secretary of Defence to have been in the – a four star in the military, before becoming Secretary of Defence, he needed a special dispensation. It was only Mattis and Marshall who got that dispensation and so, it’s very much the, kind of, model of the way they style themselves, but also is a – reflects this, kind of, American faith that there is a military way of approaching things that is free of, kind of, petty politics. Which, I think has not really been borne out in many ways, this administration, but yeah.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

We’re coming up right to the end of you hour, so I want to ask you one quick final question, just that gives you a moment to perhaps say a la – a few closing remarks and that is – I mean, you’ve, sort of, intimated a number of lessons and I wonder if you wanted to maybe capture those and say what are your lessons learned? And I was interested in this exchange because it seems like one of the lessons that emerges from your historical work is that, you know, that there are assessments made on past interventions or non- interventions about what America will do, going forward. That takes us to the whole Syria ‘red line’ debate.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Right, right, right. 17 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

But there – are there other, sort of, general lessons, either for US-China, in the current period or other, sort of, general US foreign policy lessons that you have as, kind of, takeaways?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Yes, I mean, I think there are, you know, I could talk for another hour about many of the, kind of, tactical lessons, when it comes to diplomacy and negotiation. But two somewhat broader lessons that I, kind of, thought all about and I think, kind of, infuse various parts of the book, you know, one has to do with the US-China relationship and how those of us in the West especially think about China and Chinese development. You know, we’re in a moment, in the United States especially, of, kind of, collective dismay over the failure of China to conform to our expectations, to develop the way we expected it to, you know, the kind of premise, starting with the opening in the 1970s, in addition to Cold War concerns was that engagement would start to bring political liberalisation, that capitalism would start to force changes in the politics over time. We are, all of a sudden, realising, in the US, that has not had happened, at least on a timetable that we expected it to. And so, you’ve got, as a result, this, kind of, fear of recrimination again about who lost China, in some ways, and that’s really a pattern that goes back to the Marshall mission and even before. But you can see Marshall living the same cycle, when he’s there, kind of, you know, wish – hopes projected onto Chinese realities and wishful thinking given up very, very reluctantly, even as the realities on the ground prove not quite as susceptible to change in the way we expect them to change. And then finally this, you know, the fear of recrimination and charges of betrayal that follow.

So, I think the kind of dangers of wishful thinking, when it comes to China, that are very central, I think, to American foreign policy, are one lesson that I think still has a lot of ceiling today. And then second, you know, this is a period that, as you noted, we, in the US foreign policy, rather than the transatlantic foreign policy community look back on as in, kind of, terms – in mythical terms, right? This is the time when these great policymakers, in allied capitals, kind of took on these challenges and created the models and kind of leadership that we still rely on and reference today, you know, when we talk about the liberal order about it that is, is or is not falling apart or did or did it not exist. You know, that was something that Marshall really helped to create at this time and so, when we talk about these years in American foreign policy, they’re seen as they know this time with the ambition and strength and greatness and success and, to me, the story of the China mission is a reminder that a – even at that time, there were failures as – and I do put that in quotes. I do not think that he could’ve done something that would’ve changed in so many ways, but we failed to do something that was a really central objective, in American foreign policy, and I think it, kind of, rebalances the picture of those years, in a way that is important not just for the sake of, you know, historical accuracy, but because it weighs so heavily on the way we think about American power and American foreign policy now. But is also a reminder that for Marshall, as he thought about the world, that restraint really had to go alongside ambition and that you needed to be very, very thoughtful and selective about where you applied power and where you prioritised. And if he had not done that, in this case, if he had not brought that sense of restraint to the problem in China borne of this mission, I think it’s unlikely he would’ve achieved the things he was able to achieve elsewhere.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Great, thank you very much.

18 The Failed Marshall Plan: Learning from US Foreign Policy Missteps

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Thank you so much.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

And thank you for coming to Chatham House, to London, and join me, please, in thanking Daniel [applause].

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

Thank you.