Why There Was No Marshall Plan after the Cold War

• In Event: Making and Breaking Markets across the Iron Curtain

Abstract

As the communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc collapsed from 1989 to 1991, many peoples and policymakers across the East and West assumed that one particular policy initiative would be essential to put the fledging post-socialist states on the road to stability and prosperity: a new Marshall Plan. And yet, in defiance of these widespread expectations, no new Marshall Plan emerged from the halls of Western power. Drawing on recently declassified documents from Western governments, this paper will seek to explain why a large Western aid package modelled on the Marshall Plan failed to emerge in the early 1990s.

Author

• Fritz Bartel, Texas A&M U