Leadership Quote by W. Averell Harriman

Harriman’s sentence does what the best Cold War diplomacy always did: it dresses strategy up as economic common sense. “Getting Europe on its feet” sounds like benevolent rehabilitation, an almost clinical metaphor of recovery. But the real action is in the quiet sequencing: break trade barriers in Europe first, then break them internationally. That’s not just a forecast; it’s an architecture for power. Step one creates a coherent Western European market; step two locks that market into a wider system the United States has disproportionate influence over.

The subtext is that prosperity is a political weapon. Trade liberalization isn’t framed as ideology, yet it functions as a containment tool: integrate Europe’s economies, stabilize governments, and make the communist alternative less attractive. Harriman’s tone is notably managerial, almost bloodless, and that’s the point. By presenting liberalization as “help” and “hope,” he sidesteps the more abrasive reality that barriers protect domestic industries and that dismantling them redistributes leverage. Who benefits from “increased trade with Europe”? Europe, yes, but also American exporters, American finance, and an American-led order.

Context matters: Harriman was a New Deal-era operator who became a key figure in wartime logistics and postwar planning, deeply involved in the Marshall Plan world where dollars, institutions, and rules were the new arsenal. The quote captures that moment when rebuilding Europe and remaking it were the same project: reconstruction as persuasion, markets as alliances, and “free trade” as the soft-spoken language of hegemony.