ABSTRACT
Introduction: lost theoretical insights from US Secretary of State George Marshall More than 60 years ago on June 5, 1947, US Secretary of State George Marshall gave a speech at Harvard University announcing what was to be called the Marshall Plan.2 The Marshall Plan was probably the most successful development plan in human history, re-industrializing and industrializing countries from Norway and Sweden in the North to Greece and Turkey in the Southeast. At about the same time, a similar process based on the same principles, re-industrialized and industrialized East Asia, spreading from Japan in the North-east towards the South-west. In this way, a cordon sanitaire of wealthy countries was created around the communist world to stem the communist tide that was rising at the time of Marshall’s speech. One country to benefit from the Marshall-type ideology was South Korea, a country that in 1950 was poorer (GDP per capita estimated at $770) than Somalia (GDP per capita estimated at $1057; Maddison 2003), today’s example of a failed state (see Figure 4.1).
