International Secretariats: Two Centuries of International Civil Servants and Secretariats by Bob Reinalda

Author:Bob Reinalda [Reinalda, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Globalization, Political Science, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781000206340
Google: VHD8DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 53479264
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-10-27T10:17:44+00:00

European cooperation

The driving forces behind the creation of regional IGOs can be proactive strategies of weaker states in a certain region (e.g., the League of Arab States), but also external challenges and the search for strategies to cope with them, such as the process of post-war US institution building and promotion of Western European integration as a shield against Communism. In early 1947, European economic recovery was stagnating and the Bretton Woods institutions IBRD and IMF, which were set up too small, proved unable to provide the necessary funding. Extensive US exports and a lack of dollars meant the European states were unable to pay for their imports. If the US was to avoid European bankruptcy, it had to tackle this problem on a grand scale, without involving the IBRD and the IMF. The solution was the so-called Marshall Plan that lent and donated more than $12 billion dollars to Western Europe and Japan between 1948 and 1952 (during which period the IBRD and the IMF spent less than $3 billion dollars worldwide). The Marshall Plan initiated a process of organization formation in Europe that was not planned in advance.

In setting up the European Recovery Plan, the US government wanted to avoid a situation in which the UN could dictate policy making on European recovery sponsored by the US and it did not have much faith in the ECE due to the likelihood of Soviet opposition. George Marshall preferred to make the European states jointly responsible for the plan which the US would supervise. The Soviet Union rejected the plan, which as a result restricted Europe to just Western Europe. However, the Committee for European Economic Cooperation, established in July 1947, made no progress as the 16 states were interested in what they could get out of it individually, rather than jointly, and disagreed on the question of whether Germany should be involved. The Europeans produced a collection of shopping lists instead of a coherent plan. While the US began to develop clearer ideas, such as a permanent organization to remove barriers to European trade and payments, a number of Committee members were invited to the US in connection with achieving approval of the plan that the US government needed from Congress.

French representative Robert Marjolin viewed the Committee as an opportunity to fit French economic recovery into a European plan and became its de facto secretary, spending several months traveling and meeting with European representatives.28 The Americans trusted Marjolin, who during the war had stayed in London and Washington, DC, where he had supported Jean Monnet, who was put in charge of planning the French post-war supply of food and raw materials by General Charles de Gaulle. Marjolin, who understood the Americans and had indeed married an American, was appointed the first secretary-general of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), created in April 1948 and headquartered in Paris. During Marjolin’s first period in office (1948–1952) the OEEC practically existed through US policy making, while the organization focused on economic development and productivity issues during his second term (1952–1955).

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