Probably the most successful program of international aid and nation building in history. It was named after General George Marshall, an American secretary of state, who at the end of the second world war proposed giving aid to Western Europe to rebuild its war-torn economies. North America gave around 1% of its GDP in total between 1948 and 1952; most of it came from the United States and the rest from Canada. The Americans left it to the Europeans to work out the details on allocating aid, which may be why, according to most economic analyses, it achieved more success than latter day aid programs in which most of the decisions on how the money is spent are made by the donors. The main institution through which aid was administered was the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), which in 1961 became the OECD. Nowadays, whenever there is a proposal for the international community to rebuild an economy damaged by war, such as Iraq's in 2003, you are sure to hear the phrase “new Marshall Plan”.