Marshall Plan Redux

Just six months after the American invasion of Iraq began, President George W. Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to announce that he was prepared to make “the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan” in order to rebuild Iraq. The president’s decision to link his policy in Iraq with George Marshall’s policy in post–World War II Europe reminds us of how influential the Marshall Plan remains sixty years after it was conceived. But the president’s effort at linkage also reminds us of how enormously talented the men around Marshall were in the 1947–48 period in which he served as secretary of state.

The list of those in the State Department on whom Marshall relied for formulati...