Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.... It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Speech by Secretary of State George Marshall
initiating the aid program known as the Marshall Plan, 1947
The Marshall Plan most directly resulted from which of the following?
a. A strategy focused on promoting the development of a suburban society
b. The effort to create alliances with newly decolonized countries around the world
c. A foreign policy based on the collective security of noncommunist nations
d. Conservatives' fears of domestic unrest and challenges to the traditional social order