Economic reconstruction
A new international monetary and financial order is created around the US dollar, to avoid the economic instability that existed during the interwar period and to revive international trade. Established in 1944 by the Bretton Woods agreements, at the end of a conference which brought together 44 countries, this new organization of the world economy was in fact negotiated between France, the United Kingdom and the United States, these last imposing their point of view.
The agreements established an International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the “World Bank”. The IMF and the IBRD would be responsible for ensuring the stability of national currencies and granting loans for reconstruction and development.
In addition, the agreements established a system of fixed parities against the dollar, the only currency fully convertible into gold. As the United States had a gold reserve of around three-quarters of the world's reserves, the US dollar inevitably imposed itself as an international reserve currency, in the same way as gold. Indeed, to finance the war, the European powers had to sell their gold stocks to the United States. Thus, the new monetary system was no longer based solely on the fine metal held by the central banks, but on the US dollar, as good as gold, whose value was guaranteed by the Federal Reserve of the United States, as well as by the formidable economic power of the United States.
In June 1947, in a speech delivered at Harvard University, US Secretary of State George Marshall offered Europe “fraternal help” to overcome “hunger, despair and chaos”. The “Marshall Plan” or European Recovery Program was offered to all of Europe, including the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself. However, it was subject to two conditions:American aid would be managed by common European institutions and Washington would have the right to oversee its distribution. Stalin hesitated, then, at the end of June, announced his refusal. Poland and Czechoslovakia, which initially gave a favorable response to the American proposal, were forced to refuse it in their turn.
Finally, sixteen countries, joined in 1949 by the FRG, accepted the Marshall Plan:France and the United Kingdom, which were to be the main beneficiaries, Austria, Benelux, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey. In April 1948, these sixteen countries founded the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (the OEEC, which became the OECD in 1960), a supranational body whose primary function was to manage and distribute American aid among member countries.
From 1948 to 1952, more than thirteen billion US dollars, 5/6 in the form of grants, 1/6 in the form of loans, were provided by the United States. This reconstruction aid consisted of a financial part, subsidies and loans, and another in various products and equipment (foodstuffs, tractors, production tools, etc.).
In an economic space “dollarized” by the Bretton Woods Agreements, the Marshall Plan was designed to fill the “dollar gap”, thus allowing Europeans to buy supplies and equipment from the United States while ensuring an outlet for American products. Indeed, by 1946, 42% of American exports had gone to Western Europe and an economic collapse of the “old continent” would have repercussions on the American economy itself. Assistant Economics Secretary Will Clayton put it bluntly:“Let’s say, without beating around the bush, that our goals are rooted in the needs and interests of the United States. We need markets, big markets, to buy in and to sell in. »
However, the objective of the Marshall Plan was not only economic. The Washington government had understood that the distress of the European populations played into the hands of Marxist parties aligned with Moscow, in France and Italy in particular, where more than a quarter of the electorate voted communist. From then on, the injection of American capital was the economic complement to the doctrine of containment:stemming Soviet influence by creating a space of prosperity in Europe.
The Soviets were not slow to realize this and, in October 1947, during the founding conference of the Cominform, Andrei Zhdanov, secretary of the CPSU, meeting with the delegates of the nine European communist parties, denounced the "American imperialism" which , according to him, vassalized the European economies by placing them under the tutelage of Washington. According to the Zhdanov doctrine, the world was now divided into two antagonistic camps:an “imperialist and anti-democratic camp” of which the United States is “the main leading force” and “an anti-imperialist and democratic camp”, placed under the aegis of Moscow.