German Marshall Fund

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File:Bete noir.jpg
Edwin Marcus: "While The Shadow Lengthens," March 14, 1948
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between the United States and Europe.
GMF does this by supporting individuals and institutions working on transatlantic issues, by convening leaders to discuss the most pressing transatlantic themes, and by examining ways in which transatlantic cooperation can address a variety of global policy challenges. In addition, GMF supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies.[1]

On June 5, 1972, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, the then West German Chancellor Willy Brandt delivered an address at Harvard University on the significance of the Marshall Plan and the programs it created for European recovery and development, Brandt announced the creation of a Marshall Plan memorial: The German Marshall Fund of the United States. The Marshall Plan also paved the way for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and today's European Union.[2]

The Marshall Plan

Of significance for the Marshall Plan was the March 12, 1947 "Truman Doctrine," that outlined in a presidential speech to Congress, that it would be U.S. policy to protect nations threatened by communism. On June 5, 1947 in a speech at Harvard, Secretary of State George C. Marshall called for an American plan to help Europe recover from World War II. On April 2, 1948 the U.S. Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act that authorized the Marshall Plan. Paul G. Hoffman of Studebaker Corporation (a used car salesman who eventually became president of the Ford Foundation from 1950-53[3]) was appointed Administrator of the Economic Cooperation Agency (ECA), the temporary American agency created to implement the plan. Averell Harriman was appointed special representative of the ECA in Europe. Despite the Korean War, which had begun in June 1950, transfer of funds from the U. S. to Europe had totaled $13.3 billion by 1951.[4]

The speech George C. Marshall delivered was drafted by Charles E. Bohlen, a future ambassador to the Kremlin. He used a memo prepared by a State Department Policy Planning staff directed by Soviet-expert George Kennan author of the 'long telegram' which had formed the basis of (Kennan argued greatly misinterpreted) 'Containment Policy.'[5]

Undoubtedly of benefit to war ravaged Europe the plan was also motivated by American fears that after World War II the depression of the 1930s could recur: increasing prosperity in the U.S. was one goal of the Marshall Plan — as a way of boosting exports, the plan had wide appeal to American business people, bankers, workers, and farmers.[6]

The German Marshall fund

File:BrusselsForum2007.jpg
Brussels Forum 2007 Picture by Bertelsmann Stiftung

Conceived during the Cold War by Brandt to tie Europe and the United States, for investigative journalists, the German Marshall Fund was 'a breeding ground for journalists, university students and politicians committed to Atlantism.' Although the Fund altered slightly with the collapse of the USSR, "it still draws the attention of the US secret service that is widely represented in its administration council."[7]

1972 was a the time of widespread protest against the Viet Nam war. The Red Army Fraction had just attacked the US Head Quarters in Heidelberg to destroy the strategic computer that controlled the bombers in South-East Asia. It was also the time of the strategy of tension whereby NATO secret services manipulated right and left-wing factions to encourage a more authoritarian government. The idea behind the Fund was that it would facilitate the identification and recruitment of new “messengers of Atlantism”. With the collapse of the cold war the neoconservatives have reactivated the Atlantic networks, to use in their own project dominated by two terms coined by Jospeph Nye:'Neo-liberalism' and 'soft power'.

Going East

The Fund has expanded into Eastern Europe through the establishment together with USAID of a program worth 25 million dollars, the Balkan Trust for Democracy.[8]

It is alleged that the fund has close toes with US intelligence:

It was obvious that so much discretion tried, above all things, to hide the responsibilities of the majority of directors in the Pentagon and CIA. Lee Hamillton is the vice-president of the presidential commission on September 11, member of the Homeland Security Advisory Board and has been decorated by the CIA and DIA. Hamilton, former member of Parliament, headed one of the investigation commissions on the scandal Iran-Contras where he studied the role of another manager of the Fund, Robert M. Kimmitt, who was then executive director of the National Security Council and involved in the scandal up to his neck. Later, M. Kimmit was appointed vice-president of AOL-Time-Warner by his friend, General Colin Powell.[9]

This would seem to be reinforced by the presence of Suzanne Woolsey, the wife of R. James Woolsey, former CIA director. Recently the Fund aided in the production of A Transatlantic Strategy for Democratic Development in the Middle East[10]written by:

The essay argues for a slight reorientation of the 'Transatlantic Allianc:

In the 1990s, the United States and its European allies took a transatlantic relationship that was forged during the Cold War and designed to contain Soviet power and transformed it into a new partnership focused on consolidating democracy in central and eastern Europe, halting ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and building a new partnership with Russia. Today, this relationship must again be overhauled so that it can meet a new set of challenges centered in the broader Middle East.

People

Board of Trustees

  • Guido Goldman, Co-Chairman. Director, German Studies Program, Harvard Center for European Studies, Goldman's father is Nahum Goldmann who in 1936, he helped organize the World Jewish

Congress.[14] and was in charge of the Atlantik Brucke (the Atlantic Bridge) during the Cold War.[15]

Staff

Washington D.C.

Berlin

Bratislava

Paris

Brussels

Belgrade

Ankara

Bucharest

Non-resident

References

  1. ↑ About GMF, German Marshall Fund of the United States, accessed 25 June, 2008.
  2. ↑ Library of Congress For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan, accessed 16 September 2008
  3. ↑ http://www.smokershistory.com/PHoffman.htm Much Intrigue surrounds Hoffman's role:
    "During his stay in Washington, Jean Monnet had been in more or less direct contact with a lot if not with all members of the CED and more generally with American businessmen involved in the war effort. Paul Hoffman and Averell Harriman were in particular two of his close acquaintances. This group was therefore a key element in the American side of the bridging network." Monnet, officially the head of the French Supply Council (CFA), also developed ties with Robert Nathan of the US War Production Board; George Ball, a lawyer employed by the CFA; Eugen [sic] Rostow; and Harvard Law School antitrust specialist Robert Bowie, who in 1948 became General Counsel to the American High Commissioner in Germany, John McCloy: "He had met Jean Monnet and worked with him in the 1930s when the latter was an investment banker with the American firm of Blair and Company. Dwight Morrow, a Morgan Banker who later became American Ambassador to Mexico, was an old professional acquaintance of Jean Monnet from the late 1920s. Morrow had significant clout in Washington and he was also the open door to the Morgan world and networks. Dean Acheson and after him John Foster Dulles were two powerful Secretaries of State of the Eisenhower era. Both were closely related, through previous professional and personal interactions with Jean Monnet. To these politicians and statesmen should be added the names of a few star journalists - such as Walter Lippman, who wrote in the New Republic and in the New York Herald Tribune, James Reston from the New York Times or Katherine and Philip Graham from The Washington Post."
  4. ↑ Library of Congress For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan, accessed 16 September 2008
  5. ↑ David W. Ellwood The Marshall Plan A Strategy That Worked eJournal USA, posted on the State Department Website, April 2008
  6. ↑ Library of Congress For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan, accessed 16 September 2008
  7. ↑ Thierry Meyssan (2004) A Cold War Freak for Covert Action: The German Marshall Fund, a Fund for Secret Action Specialists? Voltaire Net, 5 October, accessed 16 September 2008
  8. ↑ http://www.gmfus.org/balkantrust/
  9. ↑ Thierry Meyssan (2004) A Cold War Freak for Covert Action: The German Marshall Fund, a Fund for Secret Action Specialists? Volttaire Net, 5 October, accessed 16 September 2008
  10. ↑ republished in The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring 2005) pp. 7-21.
  11. ↑ http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/corp/dsp_iab3.cfm
  12. ↑ http://www.hoover.org/bios/diamond.html
  13. ↑ http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/faculty/mcfaul.html
  14. ↑ http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vishnevo/v_pages/vstories_nahum_goldman.html
  15. ↑ Thierry Meyssan (2004) A Cold War Freak for Covert Action: The German Marshall Fund, a Fund for Secret Action Specialists?
  16. ↑ Thierry Meyssan (2004) A Cold War Freak for Covert Action: The German Marshall Fund, a Fund for Secret Action Specialists? Volttaire Net, 5 October, accessed 16 September 2008
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