Exceptional by Dick Cheney

falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world—and we shall surely endanger thewelfare of our own Nation.
    Congress approved Truman’s Greek-Turkish Aid Act by largemajorities in both houses. Truman signed it into law on May 22, 1947.
    Secretary Marshall had returned from his meetings in Moscow seized with the importance of rebuilding Europe’s shattered economies. He tapped George Kennan to lead a new Policy Planning Office in the Department of State and instructed him to prepare a report outlining how America could most effectivelyassist the European recovery. Kennan delivered his report the day after President Truman signed the aid act. The Policy Planning staff advised, among other things, that the assistance should be based on a joint recovery plan prepared with direct involvement of the Europeans. It also suggested that the new assistance should not exclude the Soviets or Eastern Europe.
    Marshall decided to use a speech during Harvard’s commencement exercises to explain the necessity for America to act. He began by describing the devastation facing Europe and the damage that could be done, as a result, to America’s economy. “It is logical,” he said, “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 assistance would be open to all in Europe who needed it, including theSoviet Union and its allied states. “Our policy,” Marshall said, “is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” The program he was proposing would, he said, “require a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearlyplaced upon our country.” Wanting to reaffirm how high the stakes were and how important it was for America to act, Marshall had added handwritten notes to the end ofhis prepared remarks. He read them now, saying that he realized America was “remote from the scene of these troubles” and it was difficult perhaps to grasp the full scale of the suffering. And yet, he said, “The whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment. It hangs, I think, to a large extent on the realization of the American people . . . of just what can best be done and what must be done.”
    Marshall received a resounding ovation when he finished histwelve-minute speech, but the cheers were more likely for him than what he said. A modest man, not given to oratory, he had delivered the speech in such a matter-of-fact way that not even James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard,understood its significance. But the world would soon understand. Between 1948 and 1951, the United States would provide more than $13 billion tosixteen European countries, nearly $130 billionin 2015 dollars.
    A key element of Marshall’s plan was that American assistance would be provided in response to needs identified by the Europeans. British foreign minister Ernest Bevin and French foreign minister Georges Bidault reacted quickly, arranging a meeting with Soviet foreign minister Molotov in Paris shortly after Marshall’s speechto outline assistance needs. The three-way talks did not last long. Molotov announced on July 2, 1947, that the Soviets were withdrawing.
    On July 3, the French and British invited twenty-two other European nations to attend a planningconference in Paris. The ministers of the government of Czechoslovakia were planning to participate—untilStalin summoned the Czech prime minister and foreign minister to Moscow andordered them not to attend. The Czech foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, said, “I went to Moscow as a minister of a free state and I am returningas Stalin’s slave.”
    Cabinet ministers in Soviet Bloc countries were not the only ones Stalin was enslaving. Drawing upon newly