Paper title:
 An American Project Proposed Around The Marshall Plan: Applying The Tennessee Valley Authority Model On The Danube
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4316/CC.2024.01.08
Published in:
Issue 1 (Vol. 30) / 2024
Publishing date:
2024-07-31
Pages:
171 - 186
Author(s):
Arthur Viorel Tuluș
Abstract:
 The April 1947 issue of the prestigious American journal Geographical Review published an article titled „TVA on the Danube?”. The author, George Kiss/Kish, was born in Hungary and became a refugee in the United States of America in 1939. Throughout his extensive scientific and academic career, primarily at the University of Michigan, he established himself as an outstanding geographer, specialising in political geography. Kiss/Kish's article is a laborious scientific study in the field that established him, while simultaneously serving as a comprehensive demonstration in support of an interesting and innovative project, even by today's standards: the establishment of a supranational agency or authority, following the American model of the Tennessee Valley Authority, to effectively utilise the resources of the Danube river for the benefit of the inhabitants of its extended river basin. The objective of this study is not to conduct a scientific review of Kiss/Kish's article; instead, it is more important to comprehend the motivations behind the proposal, as well as the international context that initially encouraged such a project that eventually led to its failure. At the same time, adopting an integrated approach to effectively exploiting the Danube would reopen the long-standing dispute between a state’s sovereign rights over its territory against the international value of a navigable watercourse.
Keywords:
 George Kiss/Kish, political geography, Danube, Cold War, integrated exploitation of resources, regional unity, Marshall Plan.




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