Lessons for Economic Development

Following World War II and its devastation, and through the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States attempted to "build" several nations and to model the political, social, and economic institutions of these nations upon those of the United States (Walker, 230). Nation building, an integrated effort to strengthen civil society, promote liberal democracy, and enhance government accountability, has always been about more than economic growth and social development. Consider, for example, the massive economic assistance and military support provided by the United States to bolster the regimes of the shah of Iran, Nicaragua under Somoza, and Chile under General Pinochet (Walker, 23-24).

The difficulties involved in nation building are myriad. According to Fareed Zakaria (28), nation building depends almost entirely upon achieving peace in a country. As long as a nation is struggling to achieve an end to hostilities between different political, ethnic, tribal, or religious groups, nation building is simply not possible. As Zakaria (28) points out, it is only after the guns have been put away that a stable government can be put in place and the institutions needed to support social and economic development created.

The idea of using nation building as a tool to combat terrorism and/or to foster an end to conflict and to strengthen economic development rests upon a set of assumptions that Christi

ese policies worked relatively well in the 1950s and early 1960s. This was not the case, however, in the 1980s. The overwhelming cost of maintaining high levels of social welfare spending placed burdens on Western European governments that necessitated a retreat from such spending (Tipton and Aldrich, 256-257). At the same time, the gradual movement of Western Europe toward the creation of a Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Market, the European Economic Community, and ultimately the European Union represented a shift away from the nationalist ideologies of the immediate post-World War II era (Tipton and Aldrich, 92-93). It is important to recognize that United States aid to Europe under the Marshall Plan was well over US $13 billion. Aid was focused on Great Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, and the Netherlands, which together received three-quarters of the total aid (Tipton and Aldrich, 89). Though the Marshall Plan did not eliminate the balance of payments deficit of Western Europe with the United States, it was through this economic plan that Western European recovery was facilitated. The Marshall Plan also permitted planning without the pressure of immediately pressing crises and stimulated European-Ameri