Europe 60 Years After Marshall Plan

Transformative program was inspiration for several modern institutions

By Michael Buchanan

Washington -- When President Bush touched down in Slovenia June 9 for his last major visit to Europe, he set foot on a continent that has reinvented itself. From the devastation and division of World War II to the thriving European Union of today, Europe has experienced a renewal that has roots 60 years ago in the American Marshall Plan.
On April 3, 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948, which became known as the Marshall Plan after a speech given at Harvard University by Secretary of State George Marshall. Soon after becoming law, American aid shipments were flooding into Europe, and European leaders were taking the first steps of coordination that would lead to the formation of the European Union.
By the time the Marshall Plan ended at the beginning of 1952 -- five years after Marshall’s initial speech -- the United States had invested $13.3 billion, and the years 1948 to 1952 had recorded the fastest economic growth in European history.
At the time, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin called the plan “a lifeline to sinking men” and an act of “generosity … beyond belief.” In 1947, Europe survived one of the worst winters in recorded history, and experts were predicting financial and social collapse.
MARSHALL’S SPEECH
“I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious,” Marshall -- a former soldier widely respected for his honesty and administrative skills -- began after a few introductory remarks. He went on to describe dire economic and social breakdowns that were bankrupting the European continent as it struggled to recover from the devastation of World War II.
Two years after the end of the war, Europeans had no products to sell for hard currency. Because of the money shortage, farmers were not able to sell their food. This resulted in a breakdown of economic activity and fear of widespread starvation while families and governments rapidly drained their savings to buy necessities. In Germany, money was so worthless that most purchases were made by trading cigarettes.
“Thus, a very serious situation is rapidly developing which bodes no good for the world,” Marshall said. “The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.”
Over the next three to four years, Europe required massive amounts of imported food and essential products, but had no way to pay for them.
“It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world,” Marshall said. “Our policy is directed not 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.”
Marshall’s initial speech offered few details. Before the United States could move forward with large amounts of aid, “there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe” about how to spend the money, he said.
EUROPEAN REACTION
Within weeks, European governments -- led by France and Britain -- began drafting Marshall’s spending plan. The first request, for $29 billion in aid over four years, was rejected by the United States. Eventually, the parties cut the request in half.
Congress funded the first $5 billion for 18 months, with the remaining money appropriated only after careful review. The spending plan actually concluded about six months early, due to the outbreak of the Korean War and to the improving economic situation in Europe.
As European leaders first met to discuss the plan in July 1947, an editorial in LIFE -- an influential U.S. weekly magazine -- stated: “What Americans like about the Marshall Plan is that it points toward the triumph of a rational idea.” While history often is far from rational, it continued, “the Marshall Plan is a reminder that problems do have rational solutions, that some ideas are better than others, and that it is even possible to think them up well in advance of a crisis.”
TODAY’S EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS
The Marshall Plan’s requirement for economic coordination set in motion a series of events and policy decisions that evolved into the modern institutions of European cooperation.
In March 1948, Britain, France and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) signed a treaty establishing a military pact, aimed at collective defense as well as fostering cultural and economic integration. They sought more U.S. involvement, and the negotiations led, in April 1949, to the founding of NATO, which continues to integrate the defense of its democratic member nations.
In May 1950, former French Prime Minister Robert Schuman proposed joint management of the French and West German coal and steel industries. The “Schuman Plan” led in 1951 to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community by West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries. This led, in 1957, to the Treaty of Rome, which established Europe’s first full customs union, the European Economic Community, which is considered the founding organization of the modern European Union.
On the 60th anniversary of Marshall’s speech, the EU encompassed 27 nations and 500 million people, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $14 trillion, exceeding the GDP of the United States.

http://uruguay.usembassy.gov/usaweb/2008/08-289EN.shtml

How Will Candidates Explain Stances on Meeting Hostile Leaders?

Political analysts detail candidates’ likely strategies
By Eric Green
Washington -- Senator John McCain and the man he is expected to face in November for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama, are presenting contrasting philosophies on whether to negotiate with hostile foreign dictators and rogue leaders, with the question becoming which position will be more attractive to American voters, according to a leading political analyst.
Illinois Senator Obama has stated his willingness to meet with Cuba’s Raúl Castro and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. McCain, a senator from Arizona, opposes such talks, saying Obama’s stance would only embolden America’s “implacable foes.”
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, spoke recently with America.gov.
Ornstein, also an election analyst with the CBS Television Network, said, “What we know is that Americans, in principle, like the idea of talking to others, including adversaries; in that sense, Obama is on the right side of public opinion.”
The issue, said Ornstein, involves whether Obama’s approach -- “direct talks by the president, not surrogates, with no preconditions, only prearrangements -- will be seen as a sign of naiveté and inexperience.”
Ornstein said that to date, it appears Obama “has handled the issue adroitly enough. But more pitfalls remain, including making distinctions between Ahmadinejad” and the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, “and between Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders.”
For McCain, Ornstein said, the question is whether his attack on Obama on this issue looks like President Bush’s “policy of not talking to adversaries,” or whether the attempt to make a distinction between a U.S. secretary of state’s talking to a foreign adversary instead of a president “will resonate at all with voters.”
NBC ANALYST SAYS CANDIDATES USING NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES OF OPPONENT
Chuck Todd, political director for the NBC television network, told America.gov that the two candidates are trying to paint each other with negative stereotypes on whether an American president should meet with hostile foreign leaders.
Todd said the back-and-forth between the two candidates raises the question of which stereotype will prevail with U.S. voters.
Regarding Iran, Obama has claimed he never said he would talk directly with Ahmadinejad, only with Iranian leaders. This parsing of words, said Todd, might lead to a debate about who exactly is the leader of Iran.
In Obama’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Todd, the Illinois senator sought to portray his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “very Bush-like” and wanted to contrast his fresh take on foreign policy with the approach of the New York senator.
Obama “made some commitments that I think he wishes he had back, frankly,” said Todd. But Todd said Obama “thinks he can win” the argument about negotiating with dictators by saying McCain adheres too closely to President Bush’s more unilateral, hard-line foreign policy.
VIRGINIA POLITICAL ANALYST SAYS MCCAIN FACES TOUGH BATTLE
Political analyst Larry Sabato told America.gov that McCain “obviously has a very tough battle under adverse conditions that face any Republican” who runs for elected office in 2008.
McCain’s best tactic against Obama is charging the Democrat with inexperience, “especially as it applies to foreign affairs, the military, defense and national security,” said Sabato, a University of Virginia professor of politics.
Sabato said McCain’s job “is to paint Obama as too risky” and lacking “the experience to make rational and thoughtful decisions in the nation’s interests.”
McCain could employ the word “naïve” over and over again to define Obama, said Sabato, adding that other likely charges include “gullible and too trusting of these evil dictators around the world who would gladly slit our throats if they had the opportunity.”
Sabato said Obama could respond by casting himself in the youthful image of a new generation of leadership similar to that exemplified by John F. Kennedy, who said in his January 1961 presidential inaugural address that America should “never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”
McCain’s strategy is to press his argument about not negotiating with hostile dictators in such conservative-leaning states with large numbers of military personnel as Virginia, Sabato continued.
The Arizona senator also could try to make this appeal in Florida, Sabato said, which has conservative voters attached to the state’s many military installations and a large Cuban-American population that objects to talking to Cuba’s communist leaders.
For additional information, see “Candidates on the Issues.”

Famine Early Warning System Can Predict Food Shortages

Guinea-Bissau is a small country in West Africa. Complex patterns can be seen in the shallow waters along its coastline, where silt carried by the Geba and other rivers washes out into the Atlantic Ocean.

U.S. aid agency’s international network uses satellites to spot crop trends
By Cheryl Pellerin
Since 1985, when scientists first used satellites to produce continental-scale images of vegetation and crops across Africa, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded an effort that warns nations and regions months in advance of serious impending food shortages.
USAID established the famine early warning system (FEWS) to help prevent or respond to famine conditions in sub-Saharan Africa by giving decision makers specific information about drought conditions or dwindling crop yields based on satellite remote-sensing data.
Satellite sensors acquire images of the Earth and transmit the data to ground receiving stations worldwide. Once the raw images are processed, analysts can document changing environmental conditions like pollution, global climate change, natural resource distribution and urban growth.
In this effort, USAID partners with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the United States, and collaborates with international, regional and national partners. Chemonics International, a global development firm, implements the program for USAID.
In 2000, the FEWS Network (FEWS NET) was formed to establish more effective, sustainable, African-led food security and partnerships to reduce the vulnerability of at-risk groups to famine and floods.
“At the beginning, it was primarily remote sensing,” Gary Eilerts, USAID program manager for FEWS NET, told America.gov. “It was pretty much looking at rainfall and vegetation and trying to say what we thought was happening in terms of food security.”
IMAGERY AND MARKETS
Today, he said, the program has 23 offices around the world where analysts combine maps, data and imagery with knowledge of local markets and trade in each country, and information about local livelihoods, to determine what food the market can buy locally, what it can bring in and what people can afford.
“Food security is a very complex phenomenon,” geographer Molly Brown, who works for the Biospherics Sciences Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told America.gov. “Just because you have green stuff on the ground doesn’t mean you’re producing anything in the way of food.”
USAID spent $14.9 million on FEWS NET activities in 2007, funding operations in 17 African nations; regional offices in Burkina Faso, Kenya and South Africa; and country offices in Afghanistan, Haiti and Guatemala.
In the field offices, analysts study satellite imagery, local livelihoods, food security and vulnerability, markets and trade, early warning systems and agricultural economics. They also plan contingencies for and responses to food issues.
The USGS employs regional scientists for Central America, East Africa, West Africa and Southern Africa who support FEWS NET activities and strengthen the technical capacity of regional and national institutions.
FEWS NET gets its warnings out through a mix of products that are printed and posted online, Charles Chopak, Chemonics’s chief of party for FEWS NET activities, told America.gov.
These include monthly food-security updates for the 23 countries and three regional offices that are targeted to technical readers in ministries of agriculture, finance and social welfare. Regular food-security outlooks -- maps updated semi-annually -- show projected food insecurity for a country.
“When a situation is emerging or evolving,” Chopak said, “we put out a one-page food-security alert that describes what’s causing the issue and what the impact will be on food security.”
In a typical year, FEWS NET analysts might be able to give warnings five months to six months in advance of a food problem. In a bad year, they might be able to give a one- to two-month warning.
Anyone can sign up for e-mail alerts on the FEWS NET Web site. Audiences for the warnings include local governments, U.N. agencies in FEWS NET countries, USAID missions and embassies, local and international nongovernmental organizations and food-security consultants.
FOOD CRISIS
The average price of rice worldwide has more than tripled since early 2006 and wheat, corn and soybean prices have more than doubled, triggering food riots and threatening to plunge more than 100 million people into deeper hunger and poverty. The causes of the crisis vary, but the result in many places is famine. (See “Multiple Factors Drive Up Global Food Prices.”)
The evolving and increasingly advanced work of FEWS NET becomes even more critical during such a crisis, Eilerts said.
“I spend about 80 percent of my time now dealing with that crisis,” he added. “It’s much more important to know what [food] is [available in countries] and what is not. And it’s much more important to be able to follow the changes over time because this problem will be with us for several more years, if not 10 more years.”
“We’re developing a series of products specifically to respond to people at various [technical] levels who want to monitor and take action on rising prices,” Chopak said.
One product will compare the main staple food of the poor in each country with a likely substitute and try to understand the relative price changes of each. Another product will examine a series of price changes in a region and explain the food-security effect of the change.
FEWS NET is adding to its monthly reports in each country an urban assessment and vulnerability section that discusses food-security issues in urban areas, which may be more vulnerable to food shortages than agricultural areas.
More information about FEWS NET is available at the USAID Web site.
For more about remote sensing systems, see. "U.S. Agencies Moving Forward in Planning Landsat 7 Successor."

Uruguayan Students Participate in Global UGrad Program

The Uruguayan undergraduate students selected to participate in the 2008 Global UGrad Program chat with Ambassador Frank E. Baxter during a pre-orientation session at the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, June 4, 2008. Seated around the table are: Fiorella Bafundo (University of the Republic), Tamara Míguez (Instituto de Profesores Artigas), Lucía Caumont (Catholic University), Irace González (Instituto de Profesores Artigas), Verónica Pérez Urioste (Cultural Assistant, U.S. Embassy Montevideo), Ambassador Frank E. Baxter, Magdalena Gutiérrez (Universtity of the Republic), Amalia Bonica, Josefina Caviglia (University of the Republic), Javier Maseiro (ORT University)

Nine undergraduate students have been selected to attend accredited institutions in the U.S.

Nine applicants have been selected among more that 70 undergraduate students from all five Uruguayan universities to participate in this year's Global Undergraduate Program. (See related article.)
The participants will be enrolled full-time in undergraduate course work chosen from the host institution´s existing curriculum to allow students ample opportunity for substantive interaction with U.S. faculty and student peers, and for exposure to U.S. academic and classroom culture.The Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (also known as the Global UGRAD Program) is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. It provides one semester and academic year scholarships to outstanding undergraduate students from underrepresented sectors in East Asia, Eurasia and Central Asia, the Near East and South Asia and the Western Hemisphere for non-degree full-time study combined with community service, internships and cultural enrichment. Approximately 460 scholarships will be awarded in 2008.

Reducing Demand Is Key To Curbing Human Trafficking, U.S. Says

A woman holds the school ID of her missing daughter. Demand for cheap labor and sexual services must be addressed to end human trafficking and modern-day slavery, U.S. officials say at a briefing on the State Department's Eighth Trafficking in Persons Report.

Forced labor gets special focus in the 2008 report on modern-day slavery
By Jane Morse
Washington -- The demand for cheap labor and sexual services must be addressed to end human trafficking and modern-day slavery, say U.S. officials.
At a June 4 briefing for the release of the State Department’s eighth annual Trafficking In Persons Report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the 2008 report, for the first time, examines prosecution data.
She cited one “disturbing discovery” in particular: “Although more countries are addressing sex trafficking through prosecution and convictions, the petty tyrants who exploit their laborers rarely receive serious punishment. We see this as a serious shortcoming, and as we move our efforts forward, we and our allies must remember that a robust law enforcement response is essential. “
Ambassador Mark Lagon, the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said the 2008 report also focuses on forced labor, a form of trafficking in persons.
Lagon recounted instances of workers imprisoned in factories under brutal conditions that could be categorized only as forced labor. Evidence of forced labor is especially strong in Thailand’s shrimp-processing industry, he said, and in charcoal production and on sugar plantations in Brazil.
In addition to slave labor in factories, many trafficking victims find themselves enslaved as domestic servants. Lagon said the government of the Philippines has taken steps to prevent workers from accepting domestic employment in certain countries where such enslavement is prevalent. Lagon called on more governments around the world to exercise stronger political will to prevent trafficking.
Lagon said the 2008 report takes a close look at the factors that create demand and at the recruiters of trafficked victims. Such recruiters often establish fees for finding “work” for their “clients” that are so onerous the result is debt bondage. Debt bondage is a form of enslavement in which workers find they never can pay off their debts to win their freedom or the right to keep their wages.
The ambassador also called for more services for the treatment and rehabilitation of the formerly enslaved. “We must restore humanity to those who have been dehumanized,” he said.
The 2008 report evaluates the efforts of 170 countries to combat human trafficking. The report aims to raise awareness of the scourge of modern slavery and to encourage countries to take action to prevent it.
The report places countries in “tiers” based on an assessment of the government’s compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking as explained in the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Protection Act of 2000. Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries have moderate to severe challenges in controlling trafficking. Another category, “Tier 2 Watch List,” indicates countries in danger of falling to the bottom Tier 3.
Lagon said that in the 2008 report, Madagascar moved to Tier 1 -- the best of the ratings -- by demonstrating the ability to take effective anti-trafficking steps with minimal resources. Moldova, however, fell to Tier 3. Both previously had been classified in Tier 2.
China and India remain on the Tier 2 Watch List. China, he said, has made insufficient efforts to combat trafficking, especially in regards to North Korean women who are trafficked into China as “wives” or prostitutes. Those North Koreans unlucky enough to be returned by authorities to North Korea routinely are punished by the North Korean regime, he said.
In contrast, India has made more efforts to protect children who become victims of trafficking, but the government still does not recognize bonded labor as a form of slavery, Lagon said.
TRAFFICKING A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM
According to U.S. estimates, some 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders each year. That number does not include the millions of people trafficked within their own countries.
Trafficking is a problem in the United States as well, where an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked into the country each year. A separate report on trafficking problems inside the United States is produced each year.
U.S. efforts to combat trafficking involve partnerships with other countries, international and nongovernmental organizations. In fiscal year 2007, the U.S. government spent approximately $79 million to fund 180 anti-trafficking projects in about 90 countries. Since fiscal year 2001, the United States has funded more than $528 million for anti-trafficking projects worldwide.
Even though the problem of human trafficking is severe, the outlook is not entirely gloomy. According to Rice, in recent years there has been “a hopeful global movement uniting civil society, governments, and international organizations” to abolish human trafficking.
“We hope this report encourages responsible nations across the globe to stand together, to speak with one voice, and to say that freedom and security are non-negotiable demands of human dignity,” she said.
“Together I believe this movement of governments, civil society, and brave individuals of conscience can rescue, rehabilitate, and restore the lives of those who have been treated as less than human.”
The full text of the 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report is available on the State Department Web site. See also U.S. Government Efforts to Fight Demand Fueling Human Trafficking and The Facts About Human Trafficking for Forced Labor also on the State Department Web site.