The Growth of American Power Through Cold and Hot Wars 307Republican.” To Taft, the act was a signal to the world that the U.S. would be
aggressive in world affairs, with a reorganized military and interventionist
arms like the CIA. But such measures, rather than providing security, would
actually endanger the United States by drawing it into conflicts all over the
world. Taft warned that the country could not be armed for every possible
conflict without maintaining a huge and permanent war economy with budget
deficits, with production directed toward the military, government-imposed
economic controls, and vast amounts of money spent on the armed services–
and that would lead to economic crisis and the loss of political and econom-
ic freedoms for the American people.
Americans had to be careful, as Taft saw it, not to become “imperialists”
who were ready to take a “provocative stand on every controversial issue” or
attack “every” country “in the world.” With this new emphasis on interna-
tional commitments and institutions, Taft feared, “our fingers will be in every
pie. Our military forces will work with our commercial forces to obtain as
much of world trade as we can lay our hands on. We will occupy all the strong
strategic-points in the world and try to maintain a force so preponderant that
none shall dare attack us... Potential power over other nations, however
benevolent its purposes, leads inevitably to imperialism.” Taft’s words, as we
shall see, were prophetic in many ways, and his criticism of this new global
approach came as the U.S. was indeed getting ever more involved in global
affairs. At the same time as the national security state was being created, the
U.S. developed the Marshall Plan to provide aid to the war-torn countries of
Europe. The plan was presented as a way for the U.S. to get aid to Britain,
France, Italy and many other countries that were wiped out during World War
II. The amount to be spent, $17 billion [which would be over $140 billion
today in real dollars, or nearly $1 trillion when figured as a relative share of
the gross domestic product] to help 16 countries, was considered massive. But
that money was not some humanitarian gesture to help people damaged by
war. It was a vital part of the economic program for American power.
Perhaps the greatest fear of American political and economic officials was
that another depression would occur. In order to prevent that, U.S. businesses
needed markets, but Europe lacked the funds needed to buy American goods.
So the Marshall Plan resolved that issue. It offered huge amounts of aid to
Europe but, as with the IMF and World Bank, with strings attached. Countries
receiving aid from this program [officially the European Recovery Program, and