The Marshall Plan revitalized postwar Western Europe, contained Soviet expansion, stopped the spread of communism, helped preserve the European capitalist tradition, powered tremendous economic growth, and helped save the US economy from a postwar depression. Or so conventional wisdom would have it. Winston Churchill once referred to the Marshall Plan as "the most unsordid act in all of history." Few American policies have been treated so reverently by historians.

The Marshall Plan is more than a historical event—it has become a modern myth. As such, it may be mostly true or mostly false, but it exercises a powerful hold over reality. And the perceived success of the Marshall Plan has influenced American foreign-aid policy since the late 1940s. Nearly all of the US foreign-assistance programs of the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, were conceived with the Marshall Plan in mind. Since the late 1940s, many Latin American leaders have called for a "Marshall Plan for Latin America." President Ronald Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative bears the stamp of Marshall Plan influence, and a more comprehensive aid plan for Latin America has been advocated by the Reagan administration. On March 5, 1983, then–US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick said that "Washington should initiate a major economic aid program for Central America similar to the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II."