Are you a government planning a grand international initiative that aims to bundle economic progress with strategic interest in an alluring wrapping of moral righteousness? Here’s a thought: why not call it a Marshall Plan?
The US postwar initiative, named after George Marshall, President Harry Truman’s secretary of state, spent around 5 per cent of US GDP to shore up western Europe’s economies against the threat of Soviet domination. Today’s twin challenges for the US — climate change and Chinese geopolitical influence — seem roughly equivalent in nature, and the calls to repeat the exercise have duly begun, matched by similar from Beijing.
The latest offering is from Brian Deese, formerly director of the National Economic Council in the Biden administration, who has proposed a full-spectrum offensive covering tech transfer, finance and trade to the developing world. The instinct is right but unlike with Truman’s original, the US lacks the capabilities in several key areas to realise the ambition.