Why the Kushner Plan is not the Marshall Plan

Photo by: jannoon028

In the media follow-up to the White House’s unveiling of the “carrot” portion of its long-anticipated “Deal of the Century,” presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner repeatedly compared what may become known as the Kushner Plan to the post-W.W. II Marshall Plan.

The Marshall Plan, named for popular Secretary of State George Marshall, was a successful and compassionate strategy that laid the groundwork for restoring the economic viability of the vanquished nations of Europe, particularly Germany. Kushner remarked that he had been doing a good deal of reading about the Marshall Plan so it’s likely that he knows the plan was actually conceived by President Harry Truman (“I called it the Marshall Plan because if I had called it the Truman Plan, those boys in the Congress never would have approved it.” Truman once quipped). Truman based the plan on a 1947 report written by Gen. Lucius Clay titled: “Report on Germany” which contained detailed recommendations concerning the war-ravaged nation’s economic reconstruction.

The Kushner Plan, to be unveiled by the U.S. at next week’s international conference in Bahrain is dubbed “Peace to Prosperity” and envisions a $50 billion global investment fund intended to elevate the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies (and build a transportation corridor between the West Bank and Gaza) over a period of ten years.

This sum brings me to the first and most obvious disparity between the two plans. The Marshall Plan, which was operational for three years (1948 to 1951) carried a price tag of $12 billion, and that translates into $100 billion in today’s dollars. Pro-rating these numbers we see that the Marshall Plan expended $33 billion per year (in adjusted dollars) while the Kushner Plan averages only $5 billion per year.
But this expenditure difference is by no means the most critical one. The Kushner Plan, despite the reversed moniker, seeks to achieve peace through the creation of prosperity. The philosophy of the Marshall Plan was the exact mirror opposite. It sought and succeeded in cultivating prosperity AFTER, not BEFORE, peace was achieved with our enemies. 

Before the funds began flowing, the Nazi regime was completely and unconditionally defeated, their leaders put on trial, in Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the culture scrubbed clean of all remnants of Hitler’s racist Third Reich ideology via an Allied program known as de-Nazification. 
Kushner points out that the current initiative is only the economic component of a two-step plan.  The U.S. feels that the economic initiative will put incentives into place that will prod the Palestinians into agreeing to the second political component (the “stick”). The as-yet-unveiled political portion will call for talks between the parties in order to reach agreements about borders, capitals, autonomy, holy sites, and all the other thorny issues that have blocked the path to peace.

The wishful thinking goes that by the time the second shoe drops, the Palestinians will be so enamored of their new-found prosperity, that they will forget all about destroying Israel and be willing to live side-by-side with the Jewish State in peace. 

History has shown that nations can be moved due to economic incentives. During the early days of the Cold War, Truman realized that by boosting the economic prosperity of Western European countries, he was building a formidable bulwark against Soviet expansionism. In theory, achieving true prosperity by creating a secure infrastructure that will attract meaningful capital investment and create a million new jobs (as Kushner envisions), should serve to diminish Palestinian animosity towards Israel. It has been demonstrated in Arab states across the region that as their populations succeed in extracting themselves from poverty, their calls for Israel’s destruction become more subdued.  

The key flaw in the Kushner Plan, however, is one of timing. It is guilty of placing the prosperity cart before the political horse. The sad fact remains that it will prove impossible to implement the Kushner Plan as long as the current leadership in Gaza and the West Bank remains in power. Abbas and the Fatah rejected the plan long before it was even announced. This might seem strange given that they are saying “No, thanks” to an influx of $50 billion that would, in all likelihood, pass through their corrupt sticky fingers. But there is more at stake here than mere billions. The success of the Kushner Plan would squelch the flow of so-called humanitarian aid from the E.U. and the U.N.; a veritable fountain of cash that has been keeping both the Abbas and the Hamas regimes in power for more than a dozen years. To imagine that they would endorse disrupting the lucrative status quo for the trifling purpose of delivering a better quality of life to the Palestinian people they govern is the utmost form of naïvety. On top of that, the entire notion of pouring billions into the hands of leaders who regularly engage in the most vicious and vituperative anti-Semitic incitement, who name their sports arenas after the murderers of innocent children, and who train their own children to become knife-wielding terrorist assassins, is totally absurd.

Imagine, for a moment: What if the Marshall Plan had been conducted in this way? Picture billions of dollars of U.S. aid flowing into Germany while Hitler was alive and BEFORE Germany’s unconditional surrender? Did anyone at that time suggest: “Well, let’s rebuild Germany, but let’s allow the Nazis to remain in power. It’s our hope that once they get back on their feet economically, they’ll tone down all this nasty Jewish persecution and extermination business.”

That would have been viewed as dangerous nonsense then, yet it is exactly what is being proposed today. Before reconstruction could begin in Germany, the evil edifice had to be completely and irrevocably destroyed. This is what de-Nazification succeeded in doing. Swastikas were banned. Himmler Strasse and Goebbels Platz were renamed. Eventually, the Germans crept out from the shadow of fascism and were deemed ready to start the long and arduous job of building a new society. That’s when the Marshall Plan went into action. And that is why it worked.

For the Kushner Plan to achieve similar success it must first invert its priorities. It cannot be Peace through Prosperity. It must be Peace and then Prosperity. Before the envisioned infrastructure infusion can take place there must first be a complete regime removal. The Plan must first declare that the roadmap to peace outlined in the failed 1994 Oslo Accords are now defunct and its misbegotten offspring, the Palestinian Authority, is no more. It must then call for new leadership that will agree to a program of de-Jihadization under Israeli and international supervision. This program will outlaw any manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Palestinian media, in the schools, mosques and everywhere else. 

Sadly, the Hamas dictators of Gaza will undoubtedly need to be deposed by military force, but this must be done or else face a constant flow of arms along the newly built transportation corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. 

Governance of these Arab populated areas will temporarily fall to the IDF, just as the Allies’ High Command coordinated the occupation of post-war Germany prior to the Marshall Plan’s implementation. Once the Palestinian propaganda mills stop breeding racist hatred, the occupation will end. 
The underlying thinking of the Kushner Plan is sound. Provide people with an opportunity to improve the quality of their lives, and they will invariably move towards peace. But this only is true if there are no insurmountable obstacles in the way of such movement. Today the obdurate and corrupt cadres of Arab leadership constitute that obstacle. If they are not supplanted they will continue to poison the minds of young Palestinians. They will continue to inflame and incite hatred of Jews in order to maintain their own hold on power. They care nothing for prosperity or for building a better future for the people they govern and so will not be persuaded to participate by offering such an outcome as an incentive. The current Palestinian leaders are unredeemable and must be written off if any such plan is to succeed.

If the Kushner Plan is to become something more than merely another well-intentioned peace initiative to come crashing down on the rocks of reality, it must reverse itself and call for a political solution first, no matter how daunting a task that may be. 

The Marshall Plan is remembered today as historically significant because it allowed economic prosperity to gain a foothold in war-torn Europe. The Kushner Plan, as it currently stands, appears destined to become a forgotten footnote. 

Peter Weisz is an author, political commentator and owner of Peter Weisz Publishing. He lives in West Palm Beach