Labor in the US foreign policy during early cold war : the Marshall Plan and American-Turkish labor relations, 1945-1955

Abstract

American foreign policy, parallel to the rise of the working class as of the 1860s, has included a new policy actor: labor. Likewise, in the aftermath of World War II and emergence of bipolar world, the United States of America actively made use of labor unions and rendered it an intrinsic Cold War value. This thesis describes America’s use of labor tool in its struggle against communism after providing a general account of labor movement and its role in American foreign policy making, through descriptive history method. Major objective of the United States was to redress Europe through military and economic aid vis-à-vis the specter of communism, to secure the periphery and contain the U.S.S.R. The road map of this new American global strategy became a monolithic one with the Marshall Plan and indoctrinated with the Truman Doctrine, which also included the labor element. The thesis will analyze the significant role that labor in the U.S. foreign policy, shaped with American exceptionalism; its development and support for the anti-communism policies. The reason why this thesis has been written is that there is no written source elaborating Turkish-American industrial relations from the perspective of Cold War. With this end, by making use of comparative history method, Turkish industrial relations case is studied to illustrate the know-how assistance and ideology trade-off of America to Turkish labor unions, which highlights the importance ascribed by the U.S.A. to labor as a foreign policy component.