Sovereign Soldiers: How the U.S. Military Transformed the Global Economy after World War II

Abstract

Sovereign Soldiers by Grant Madsen provides readers with an intriguing account of the links between the lessons learned from U.S. military occupations after World War II and the formation of Republican economic policy during the Eisenhower administration. The book argues that the postwar travails of Germany and Japan taught luminaries such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Lucius D. Clay, and Bureau of the Budget director Joseph Dodge that the most appropriate economic policy was the reestablishment of nonregulated markets backed by conservative fiscal and monetary policies. Madsen argues that this classical policy, rather than that advocated by the academically ascendant liberal Keynesians, jump-started the “golden age of capitalism.” Thus, Madsen claims in his subtitle that Republican-oriented U.S. military leaders transformed the global economy. While there is much to like in Madsen's careful scholarship, his formulation overstates the role of his selected military officials in economic policy formation. Madsen neglects the ways the Roosevelt and Truman administrations laid the basis for a stable transition to a peacetime economy by providing resources to allies through the Lend-Lease Act (1941) and the Marshall Plan (1948) without creating destabilizing debt. One unfortunate omission in this volume is any consideration of George Marshall's contribution to the rejuvenation of the postwar economy.