8 ms·

I'm no flag-waver, but I think it's important to point out that for 40+ years after WW2, it was an extensive (and expensive) US military budget which countered

I'm no flag-waver, but I think it's important to point out that for 40+ years after WW2, it was an extensive (and expensive) US military budget which countered Soviet aggression. So when you talk about all these great social services, you have them in part because of a very expensive investment we made in the defense of western Europe, which freed you to spend money on these things.

jacquesm 13y ago
I don't think you get to guilt trip the French in this respect. 'Force de Frappe'
- dctoedt 13y ago
  This is getting a bit off-topic, but go back in time 50 or 60 years: Ask the citizens of West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, (neutral) Austria, etc., whether Force de Frappe kept them from Soviet domination. (Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France. That's relevant because in a conventional war without U.S. forces, the Warsaw Pact forces could have rolled to the Channel in weeks if not days.) No, it was NATO that served as the real deterrent to the Soviets. NATO was largely (and expensively) underwritten by the U.S. Le Grand Charles [de Gaulle] withdrew France from the NATO military alliance in the early 1960s. That freed up who knows how much in the way of French resources, with France still effectively still living under the protection provided by NATO. Personal note: When I was a kid, my dad, a U.S. Air Force officer, was stationed in France; we lived "on the economy" in a little farm village, where my sisters and I went to the local schools and as a result were bilingual. We were upset when we thought we were going to have to move back to the U.S., and leave our friends, sooner than scheduled because of de Gaulle's announced intention to kick out U.S. forces. (As it turned out, that didn't happen until after our scheduled move back to the U.S.)
  - michaelt 13y ago
    Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France. From what I've read, during the cold war many countries developed short-range, small yield nuclear weapons. American examples are some of the most famous, like the Davy Crockett missile. The thinking was, for the same reason France might not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear attack, the Soviets might not use large nuclear weapons against a small nuclear weapon attack.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    > Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France I dunno whether the French would have, but I know the Americans would have. It was US policy through much of the Cold War that conventional forces in Europe were only to be a "tripwire" to trigger a nuclear response, rather than a force strong enough to contain a Soviet attack on their own. This allowed the US and other NATO nations to economize on conventional arms and avoid having to conscript massive numbers of men.
    - dctoedt 13y ago
      I don't have any specific information about this, but somehow I doubt that the French atomic capability (Force de Frappe) would have been enough to destroy the USSR as a functioning society, in contrast to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which was eminently capable of doing the job. The French nukes therefore would have had limited value as a deterrent against the Soviets. Try this thought experiment: First, recall the Soviets' ability to absorb fearful military punishment, as well as their willingness to act brutally in eastern- and central Europe during and after WW2; in East Germany in 1953; in Hungary in 1956; and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Second, imagine that in the 1950s or 1960s the Soviets had invaded Germany --- but also imagine that there was no effective NATO protection because (hypothetically) the U.S. had gone isolationist. Third, assume that the Soviets had punched through Germany; reached the Rhine; and pushed through into France. OK, now let's assume for the sake of argument that in response, the French had nuked the invading Soviet forces, but not the USSR homeland (for fear of provoking massive Soviet retaliation), using only small, tactical nukes. It's not unreasonable to think that the Soviets would have responded in turn along much the same lines as they did in WWII --- but this time with their own nuclear weapons --- by obliterating the French armed forces, and probably a French city or three to make sure the message got through. The French would (sensibly) have surrendered, of course. The Soviets then would have done much as they did in eastern Germany after WWII: They'd have carted off everything useful that they could, as war booty (euphemistically described as "reparations"). They probably would have shipped thousands of people off to slave-labor camps in the gulag, most of whom would not be seen nor heard from ever again. They'd have settled in to administer the ruined France as yet another impoverished Soviet vassal state under a Communist puppet government. So France's nuclear Force de Frappe likely wasn't a real deterrent to the Soviets, but instead was merely anti-American and anti-British posturing by de Gaulle, safe behind what he knew would be the protective shield of NATO military power. (Do de Gaulle's attitude and actions remind anyone else of what Hamid Karzai has been doing lately?)
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  In what way is this a guilt trip? When you compare the US and the French system, you don't get to just say "well, they did it why can't we?" as if that question exists in a vacuum. We have a defense program which is a massive government expenditure -- which pre-empts other government expenditures such as single-payer health care -- so a fair comparison would have to look at the fact that the French had a de facto defense subsidy. If each country in Western Europe had been responsible for building up the kind of deterrent force which we were able to present, the calculus for a single-payer program would change. Certainly Force de Frappe was a strategic asset. Can you concede that without NATO (dominated by the US) the French investment in defense would have needed a drastic increase in order to fill that vacuum? If there were no NATO, at the least I think you can acknowledge that all of Germany would have been a Soviet client, putting France on a front line against the Warsaw Pact countries.
EliRivers 13y ago
Which was entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. Certainly not out of self-interest, no no no.
- heedspin 13y ago
  I believe that was Ayn Rand's point: Acting out of self interest helps everyone.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    A stopped clock is right twice a day; if everyone is helped by someone acting out of self-interest, it's a lucky by-product.
    - Noxchi 13y ago
      Do you honestly believe everything humans do isn't done out of self interest? EVERYTHING we do ultimately comes down to trying to spread and preserve * our genes * our family's genes * our friends' genes and all the other social groups humans form, in the order of priority being group size smallest to least. Emotions are the definable channel to that "gene preserving" desire. Everything we do in life is to achieve a certain emotional state (think about it). We don't want money. We want what it will mean to us (e.g. security, power, fun, freedom, etc.). We don't want a relationship, we want what it will mean to us (love, belonging, etc.). Nature's calibrated human has his emotions correctly / optimally linked to spreading and preserving his and other humans' genes.
      - EliRivers 13y ago
        "Do you honestly believe everything humans do isn't done out of self interest?" Yes, I do. I believe that I have personal experience of people doing thing detrimental to themselves, that they know are detrimental to themselves, that they do willingly. We are capable of overriding our emotional and physical reactions. I suspect you have already decided on your conclusion, and will fit all evidence to that conclusion.
- 13y ago
flexie 13y ago
The first many years after WW2 Europe spent rebuilding itself. America came out of the war with barely a scratch on its home territory. Although many American soldiers had died overseas no cities or industries were destroyed and almost no civilians died. In Europe, two generations had been decimated by the two consecutive wars, hundreds of major cities were destroyed, infrastructure was destroyed, businesses - well, entire industries, were destroyed. The iron curtain meant that trading partners in Eastern Europe were no longer accessible. For America WW2 meant opening up it's trade with the war. Let's not forget that Europe's welfare states were born in hardship.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wikiburner 13y ago
  > The first many years after WW2 Europe spent rebuilding itself. The U.S chipped in quite a bit too. $15 billion, or $148 billion in today's dollars, which was almost 6% (!) of the U.S. GDP at the time. This was in addition to a previous $15 billion in aid before the Marshall Plan was enacted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
  - baby 13y ago
    and all that to impose its views, to counter communism.
  - flexie 13y ago
    While indeed massive, the Marshall plan was handed out over 4 years so it was around 1.5 percent of US GDP. I dont think it made it impossible for the US to build public health care.
    - smacktoward 13y ago
      Indeed -- in fact at the same time as the Marshall Plan, President Truman actually was trying to pass a national health plan: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/399.full http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/399.full
nraynaud 13y ago
I would more talk about plan Marshall. Because France and UK had to build war jets, nuclear weapons, and air carriers on their own (and caravelle, and space rockets and Concord together). The whole premise of social security in France after the war is that people with their basic needs unfulfilled voted for the nazis. So they decided that the State should provide some minimum services for everybody.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Because it was in fact the nazis that came up with a quite extensive social program in Europe.
kalleboo 13y ago
Did you miss the part where health care spending in the US is twice as much as anywhere else? Europe is spending less on "these things" than the US.
peteretep 13y ago
The problem with amateur American historians on the internet is that they seem to forget anything pre-1900 happened. You could start your remedial reading with: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolu...
- dctoedt 13y ago
  The French financial- and military contributions to the American Revolution were motivated almost entirely by a desire to contain the British and exact revenge for the loss of French North America. Financially that ended up being a very bad move for the (royal) French government, but don't imagine that they were inspired by fraternal feelings toward the American revolutionaries.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    And? Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this.
    - dctoedt 13y ago
      > Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this. Not purely --- I would imagine that certainly American leaders had future markets in mind --- but there was definitely a large component of altruism, quite possibly more so than with the French support of the American revolutionaries in the late 1770s and early 1780s. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. had nukes, as well as two broad oceans as moats. After the Japanese surrender we demobilized as fast as we could, in response to overwhelming domestic political pressure to "bring the boys home." It might well have been feasible for us to have largely retreated to our own borders and leave the western Europeans to their fates at the hands of the Soviets. Instead, we spent billions, perhaps even trillions, to maintain forces in Europe to deter Soviet aggression and to try to help western Europe recover from the devastation of the war. (We offered Marshall-Plan aid to the Soviets and their vassal states as well, but the Soviets prevented those countries from accepting [1].) Of course self-interest was part of the U.S. motivation. But there also was altruism, and generosity. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Rejection_by_the_Soviets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Rejection_by_the_...
danmaz74 13y ago
Perhaps you missed a key point: A universal healthcare system is less expensive than a privatized healthcare system. So, as much as I'm thankful for the protection from a possible soviet aggression and even more for the Marshal plan, it wasn't a lack of money that convinced the USA to have a private system. I think it was mainly a hate of anything "socialistic".
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  Less expensive on a per-patient basis, but more expensive as a government program, which would compete directly with defense spending and foreign aid. I don't disagree that there were cultural factors involved as well, as Americans have a predisposition towards certain ideas which resemble a notion of individual responsibility (for a certain definition.)
  - kwhitefoot 13y ago
    No, the US government spends more on health care per capia than almost all other countries.
CiaranMcNulty 13y ago
As mentioned in the article, the USA spends more per capita on healthcare than France, so it's not as if they're achieving this better service by being incredibly lavish with spending.
james1071 13y ago
What a dumb comment. France was at no risk whatsoever from the Soviet Union.
- dctoedt 13y ago
  > France was at no risk whatsoever from the Soviet Union. That's not the way it appeared at the time. Up until the mid-to late 1960s, it was entirely rational for Western leaders to conclude that the USSR wanted eventually to dominate all of Europe and even the Western Hemisphere. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Beginnings_of_the_Cold_War_.281947.E2.80.9353.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Beginnings_of_the_Cold...
  - usrusr 13y ago
    > That's not the way it appeared at the time. But how much of that appearance came in form of various gaps that were essentially paranioa turned into a marketing hoax for the weapons industry?
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  Yes. This comment is much smarter and better informed. I mean, it's not like you had things like this happening during that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring
nox_ 13y ago
This is the most out-of-place comment I have ever read.

jacquesm 13y ago

I don't think you get to guilt trip the French in this respect. 'Force de Frappe'

dctoedt 13y ago
This is getting a bit off-topic, but go back in time 50 or 60 years: Ask the citizens of West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, (neutral) Austria, etc., whether Force de Frappe kept them from Soviet domination. (Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France. That's relevant because in a conventional war without U.S. forces, the Warsaw Pact forces could have rolled to the Channel in weeks if not days.) No, it was NATO that served as the real deterrent to the Soviets. NATO was largely (and expensively) underwritten by the U.S. Le Grand Charles [de Gaulle] withdrew France from the NATO military alliance in the early 1960s. That freed up who knows how much in the way of French resources, with France still effectively still living under the protection provided by NATO. Personal note: When I was a kid, my dad, a U.S. Air Force officer, was stationed in France; we lived "on the economy" in a little farm village, where my sisters and I went to the local schools and as a result were bilingual. We were upset when we thought we were going to have to move back to the U.S., and leave our friends, sooner than scheduled because of de Gaulle's announced intention to kick out U.S. forces. (As it turned out, that didn't happen until after our scheduled move back to the U.S.)
- michaelt 13y ago
  Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France. From what I've read, during the cold war many countries developed short-range, small yield nuclear weapons. American examples are some of the most famous, like the Davy Crockett missile. The thinking was, for the same reason France might not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear attack, the Soviets might not use large nuclear weapons against a small nuclear weapon attack.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  > Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France I dunno whether the French would have, but I know the Americans would have. It was US policy through much of the Cold War that conventional forces in Europe were only to be a "tripwire" to trigger a nuclear response, rather than a force strong enough to contain a Soviet attack on their own. This allowed the US and other NATO nations to economize on conventional arms and avoid having to conscript massive numbers of men.
  - dctoedt 13y ago
    I don't have any specific information about this, but somehow I doubt that the French atomic capability (Force de Frappe) would have been enough to destroy the USSR as a functioning society, in contrast to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which was eminently capable of doing the job. The French nukes therefore would have had limited value as a deterrent against the Soviets. Try this thought experiment: First, recall the Soviets' ability to absorb fearful military punishment, as well as their willingness to act brutally in eastern- and central Europe during and after WW2; in East Germany in 1953; in Hungary in 1956; and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Second, imagine that in the 1950s or 1960s the Soviets had invaded Germany --- but also imagine that there was no effective NATO protection because (hypothetically) the U.S. had gone isolationist. Third, assume that the Soviets had punched through Germany; reached the Rhine; and pushed through into France. OK, now let's assume for the sake of argument that in response, the French had nuked the invading Soviet forces, but not the USSR homeland (for fear of provoking massive Soviet retaliation), using only small, tactical nukes. It's not unreasonable to think that the Soviets would have responded in turn along much the same lines as they did in WWII --- but this time with their own nuclear weapons --- by obliterating the French armed forces, and probably a French city or three to make sure the message got through. The French would (sensibly) have surrendered, of course. The Soviets then would have done much as they did in eastern Germany after WWII: They'd have carted off everything useful that they could, as war booty (euphemistically described as "reparations"). They probably would have shipped thousands of people off to slave-labor camps in the gulag, most of whom would not be seen nor heard from ever again. They'd have settled in to administer the ruined France as yet another impoverished Soviet vassal state under a Communist puppet government. So France's nuclear Force de Frappe likely wasn't a real deterrent to the Soviets, but instead was merely anti-American and anti-British posturing by de Gaulle, safe behind what he knew would be the protective shield of NATO military power. (Do de Gaulle's attitude and actions remind anyone else of what Hamid Karzai has been doing lately?)
jessedhillon 13y ago
In what way is this a guilt trip? When you compare the US and the French system, you don't get to just say "well, they did it why can't we?" as if that question exists in a vacuum. We have a defense program which is a massive government expenditure -- which pre-empts other government expenditures such as single-payer health care -- so a fair comparison would have to look at the fact that the French had a de facto defense subsidy. If each country in Western Europe had been responsible for building up the kind of deterrent force which we were able to present, the calculus for a single-payer program would change. Certainly Force de Frappe was a strategic asset. Can you concede that without NATO (dominated by the US) the French investment in defense would have needed a drastic increase in order to fill that vacuum? If there were no NATO, at the least I think you can acknowledge that all of Germany would have been a Soviet client, putting France on a front line against the Warsaw Pact countries.

EliRivers 13y ago

Which was entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. Certainly not out of self-interest, no no no.

heedspin 13y ago
I believe that was Ayn Rand's point: Acting out of self interest helps everyone.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  A stopped clock is right twice a day; if everyone is helped by someone acting out of self-interest, it's a lucky by-product.
  - Noxchi 13y ago
    Do you honestly believe everything humans do isn't done out of self interest? EVERYTHING we do ultimately comes down to trying to spread and preserve * our genes * our family's genes * our friends' genes and all the other social groups humans form, in the order of priority being group size smallest to least. Emotions are the definable channel to that "gene preserving" desire. Everything we do in life is to achieve a certain emotional state (think about it). We don't want money. We want what it will mean to us (e.g. security, power, fun, freedom, etc.). We don't want a relationship, we want what it will mean to us (love, belonging, etc.). Nature's calibrated human has his emotions correctly / optimally linked to spreading and preserving his and other humans' genes.
    - EliRivers 13y ago
      "Do you honestly believe everything humans do isn't done out of self interest?" Yes, I do. I believe that I have personal experience of people doing thing detrimental to themselves, that they know are detrimental to themselves, that they do willingly. We are capable of overriding our emotional and physical reactions. I suspect you have already decided on your conclusion, and will fit all evidence to that conclusion.
13y ago

flexie 13y ago

The first many years after WW2 Europe spent rebuilding itself. America came out of the war with barely a scratch on its home territory. Although many American soldiers had died overseas no cities or industries were destroyed and almost no civilians died. In Europe, two generations had been decimated by the two consecutive wars, hundreds of major cities were destroyed, infrastructure was destroyed, businesses - well, entire industries, were destroyed. The iron curtain meant that trading partners in Eastern Europe were no longer accessible. For America WW2 meant opening up it's trade with the war. Let's not forget that Europe's welfare states were born in hardship.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wikiburner 13y ago
> The first many years after WW2 Europe spent rebuilding itself. The U.S chipped in quite a bit too. $15 billion, or $148 billion in today's dollars, which was almost 6% (!) of the U.S. GDP at the time. This was in addition to a previous $15 billion in aid before the Marshall Plan was enacted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
- baby 13y ago
  and all that to impose its views, to counter communism.
- flexie 13y ago
  While indeed massive, the Marshall plan was handed out over 4 years so it was around 1.5 percent of US GDP. I dont think it made it impossible for the US to build public health care.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    Indeed -- in fact at the same time as the Marshall Plan, President Truman actually was trying to pass a national health plan: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversaries/healthprogram.htm http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/399.full http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/399.full

nraynaud 13y ago

I would more talk about plan Marshall. Because France and UK had to build war jets, nuclear weapons, and air carriers on their own (and caravelle, and space rockets and Concord together). The whole premise of social security in France after the war is that people with their basic needs unfulfilled voted for the nazis. So they decided that the State should provide some minimum services for everybody.

agilebyte 13y ago
Because it was in fact the nazis that came up with a quite extensive social program in Europe.

kalleboo 13y ago

Did you miss the part where health care spending in the US is twice as much as anywhere else? Europe is spending less on "these things" than the US.

peteretep 13y ago

The problem with amateur American historians on the internet is that they seem to forget anything pre-1900 happened. You could start your remedial reading with: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolu...

dctoedt 13y ago
The French financial- and military contributions to the American Revolution were motivated almost entirely by a desire to contain the British and exact revenge for the loss of French North America. Financially that ended up being a very bad move for the (royal) French government, but don't imagine that they were inspired by fraternal feelings toward the American revolutionaries.
- aaronem 13y ago
  And? Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this.
  - dctoedt 13y ago
    > Unless you're going to try to make the point that post-WWII American investment in Europe was done purely out of the goodness of the post-WWII American heart, I'm not sure where you are going with this. Not purely --- I would imagine that certainly American leaders had future markets in mind --- but there was definitely a large component of altruism, quite possibly more so than with the French support of the American revolutionaries in the late 1770s and early 1780s. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. had nukes, as well as two broad oceans as moats. After the Japanese surrender we demobilized as fast as we could, in response to overwhelming domestic political pressure to "bring the boys home." It might well have been feasible for us to have largely retreated to our own borders and leave the western Europeans to their fates at the hands of the Soviets. Instead, we spent billions, perhaps even trillions, to maintain forces in Europe to deter Soviet aggression and to try to help western Europe recover from the devastation of the war. (We offered Marshall-Plan aid to the Soviets and their vassal states as well, but the Soviets prevented those countries from accepting [1].) Of course self-interest was part of the U.S. motivation. But there also was altruism, and generosity. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Rejection_by_the_Soviets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Rejection_by_the_...

danmaz74 13y ago

Perhaps you missed a key point: A universal healthcare system is less expensive than a privatized healthcare system. So, as much as I'm thankful for the protection from a possible soviet aggression and even more for the Marshal plan, it wasn't a lack of money that convinced the USA to have a private system. I think it was mainly a hate of anything "socialistic".

jessedhillon 13y ago
Less expensive on a per-patient basis, but more expensive as a government program, which would compete directly with defense spending and foreign aid. I don't disagree that there were cultural factors involved as well, as Americans have a predisposition towards certain ideas which resemble a notion of individual responsibility (for a certain definition.)
- kwhitefoot 13y ago
  No, the US government spends more on health care per capia than almost all other countries.

CiaranMcNulty 13y ago

As mentioned in the article, the USA spends more per capita on healthcare than France, so it's not as if they're achieving this better service by being incredibly lavish with spending.

james1071 13y ago

What a dumb comment. France was at no risk whatsoever from the Soviet Union.

dctoedt 13y ago
> France was at no risk whatsoever from the Soviet Union. That's not the way it appeared at the time. Up until the mid-to late 1960s, it was entirely rational for Western leaders to conclude that the USSR wanted eventually to dominate all of Europe and even the Western Hemisphere. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Beginnings_of_the_Cold_War_.281947.E2.80.9353.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Beginnings_of_the_Cold...
- usrusr 13y ago
  > That's not the way it appeared at the time. But how much of that appearance came in form of various gaps that were essentially paranioa turned into a marketing hoax for the weapons industry?
jessedhillon 13y ago
Yes. This comment is much smarter and better informed. I mean, it's not like you had things like this happening during that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

nox_ 13y ago

This is the most out-of-place comment I have ever read.