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  • Tommasi [she/her, pup/pup's]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Answers to questions like these are always going to be pretty speculative, but I think there's a few probable reasons:

    European countries, even if they weren't very powerful, were treated with at least some pretense of civility, while you just took whatever you wanted from third world ones.

    Also, when social democracies started to form in Europe, the US was just starting to exert it's influence over the area. Other European countries like France and the UK still considered themselves powerful empires with overseas territories, and would probably not like it if the US started to meddle too obviously in countries in their neighboorhood, which were also members of stuff like OEEC .

    Finally, Norway was a country with a tiny population with poorly developed industry and not a lot of notable natural resources (until they found oil in the 70s) which was mostly true for the rest of Scandinavia too. There's just not that much actually worth exploiting when you risk alienating countries that are valuable as military allies against the Soviets because of their location.

    Also a fun fact: the European social democracies weren't free from meddling either. The post-war government in Norway wanted to organize the contry as a planned economy, but were convinced not to as a pre-requisite for being a part of the Marshall plan.

    • Diogenes_Barrel [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      until they found oil in the 70s

      this is the really important part. the exploitable resource came after political considerations overruled abusing their political system

      back when Norway was pisspoor fisher country the rest of europe didnt really give a damn about treating them well, into ww2 they were disposable and bully-able it just wasnt worth it for most except immediate neighbors