Truman Doctrine

Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledges American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." The doctrine originated with the primary goal of containing Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, and further developed on July 4, 1948, when he pledged to contain the communist uprisings in Greece and Soviet demands from Turkey. More generally, the Truman Doctrine implied American support for other nations threatened by Moscow. It became the foundation of American foreign policy, and led, in 1949, to the formation of NATO. Historians often use Truman's speech to Congress on March 12, 1947 to date the start of the Cold War.
Truman told Congress that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Truman contended that because totalitarian regimes coerced free peoples, they automatically represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States. Truman argued that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid, they would inevitably fall to communism with grave consequences throughout the region.
The Truman Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world. It shifted American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from a wartime alliance to a policy of containment of Soviet expansion, as advocated by diplomat George Kennan. It was distinguished from rollback by implicitly tolerating the previous Soviet takeovers in Eastern Europe.
Turkish Straits crisis
At the conclusion of World War II, Turkey was pressured by the Soviet government to allow Russian shipping to flow freely through the Turkish Straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. As the Turkish government would not submit to the Soviet Union's requests, tensions arose in the region, leading to a show of naval force on the site of the Straits. Since British assistance to Turkey had ended in 1947, the U.S. dispatched military aid to ensure that Turkey would retain chief control of the passage. Turkey received $100 million in economic and military aid and the U.S. Navy sent the Midway-class aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Greek crisis
Seven weeks after the Axis powers abandoned Greece in October 1944, the British helped retake Athens from the victorious National Liberation Front (EAM), controlled effectively by the Greek Communist Party (KKE). This began with a mass killing of largely unarmed EAM supporters known as the Dekemvriana on December 3, 1944. The left-wing attempted to retaliate, but was outgunned by the British-backed government and subjected to the White Terror. With the full outbreak of civil war (1946–49), guerrilla forces controlled by the Greek Communist Party sustained a revolt against the internationally recognized Greek government which was formed after 1946 elections boycotted by the KKE. The British realized that the KKE were being directly funded by Josip Broz Tito in neighboring Yugoslavia. In line with the Churchill-Stalin "percentages agreement", the Greek communists received no help from the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia provided them support and sanctuary against Stalin's wishes. By late 1946, Britain informed the United States that due to its own weakening economy, it could no longer continue to provide military and economic support to royalist Greece.
In 1946–47, the United States and the Soviet Union moved from being wartime allies to Cold War adversaries. The breakdown of Allied cooperation in Germany provided a backdrop of escalating tensions for the Truman Doctrine. To Truman, the growing unrest in Greece began to look like a pincer movement against the oil-rich areas of the Middle East and the warm-water ports of the Mediterranean.
In February 1946, Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, sent his famed "Long Telegram", which predicted the Soviets would only respond to force and that the best way to handle them would be through a long-term strategy of containment; that is, stopping their geographical expansion. After the British warned that they could no longer help Greece, and following Prime Minister Konstantinos Tsaldaris's visit to Washington in December 1946 to ask for American assistance, the U.S. State Department formulated a plan. Aid would be given to both Greece and Turkey, to help cool the long-standing rivalry between them.
American policy makers recognized the instability of the region, fearing that if Greece was lost to communism, Turkey would not last long. Similarly, if Turkey yielded to Soviet demands, the position of Greece would be endangered. A regional domino effect threat therefore guided the American decision. Greece and Turkey were strategic allies important for geographical reasons as well, for the fall of Greece would put the Soviets on a particularly dangerous flank for the Turks, and strengthen the Soviet Union's ability to cut off allied supply lines in the event of war.
Truman's address
To pass any legislation Truman needed the support of the Republicans, who controlled both houses of Congress. The chief Republican spokesman Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg strongly supported Truman and overcame the doubts of isolationists such as Senator Robert A. Taft. Truman laid the groundwork for his request by having key congressional leaders meet with himself, Secretary of State George Marshall, and Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson. Acheson laid out the "domino theory" in the starkest terms, comparing a communist state to a rotten apple that could spread its infection to an entire barrel. Vandenberg was impressed, and advised Truman to appear before Congress and "scare the hell out of the American people." On March 7, Acheson warned Truman that Greece could fall to the communists within weeks without outside aid.
When a draft for Truman's address was circulated to policymakers, Marshall, Kennan, and others criticized it for containing excess "rhetoric." Truman responded that, as Vandenberg had suggested, his request would only be approved if he played up the threat.
On March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before a joint session of Congress. In his eighteen-minute speech, he stated:
The reaction to Truman's speech was broadly positive, though there were dissenters. Anti-communists in both parties supported both Truman's proposed aid package and the doctrine behind it, and Collier's described it as a "popularity jackpot" for the President. Influential columnist Walter Lippmann was more skeptical, noting the open-ended nature of Truman's pledge; he felt so strongly that he almost came to blows while arguing with Acheson over the doctrine. Others argued that the Greek monarchy Truman proposed to defend was itself a repressive government, rather than a democracy.
Despite these objections, the fear of the growing communist threat almost guaranteed the bill's passage. In May 1947, two months after Truman's request, a large majority of Congress approved $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. Increased American aid helped defeat the KKE, after interim defeats for government forces from 1946 to 1948. The Truman Doctrine was the first in a series of containment moves by the United States, followed by economic restoration of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan and military containment by the creation of NATO in 1949.
Long-term policy and metaphor
Historian Eric Foner writes that the doctrine "set a precedent for American assistance to anticommunist regimes throughout the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union."
The Truman Doctrine underpinned American Cold War policy in Europe and around the world. In the words of historian James T. Patterson:The Truman Doctrine was a highly publicized commitment of a sort the administration had not previously undertaken. Its sweeping rhetoric, promising that the United States should aid all 'free people' being subjugated, set the stage for innumerable later ventures that led to globalisation commitments. It was in these ways a major step.
The doctrine endured, historian Dennis Merill argues, because it addressed broader cultural insecurity regarding modern life in a globalized world. It dealt with Washington's concern over communism's domino effect, it enabled a media-sensitive presentation of the doctrine that won bipartisan support, and it mobilized American economic power to modernize and stabilize unstable regions without direct military intervention. It brought nation-building activities and modernization programs to the forefront of foreign policy.
The Truman Doctrine became a metaphor for aid to keep a nation from communist influence. Truman used disease imagery not only to communicate a sense of impending disaster in the spread of communism but also to create a "rhetorical vision" of containing it by extending a protective shield around non-communist countries throughout the world. It echoed the "quarantine the aggressor" policy Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had sought to impose to contain German and Japanese expansion in 1937 ("quarantine" suggested the role of public health officials handling an infectious disease). The medical metaphor extended beyond the immediate aims of the Truman Doctrine in that the imagery combined with fire and flood imagery evocative of disaster provided the United States with an easy transition to direct military confrontation in later years with the Korean War and the Vietnam War. By framing ideological differences in life or death terms, Truman was able to garner support for this communism-containing policy.
See also
Foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration
Liberal internationalism
Eisenhower Doctrine
Anti-communism
Reverse Course
Turkey–United States relations
Greece–United States relations
Containment
Free World
References
Bibliography
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Bullock, Alan. Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951 (1983) on British roles
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Jeffrey, Judith S. Ambiguous Commitments and Uncertain Policies: The Truman Doctrine in Greece, 1947–1952 (2000). 257 pp.
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Lykogiannis, Athanasios. Britain and the Greek Economic Crisis, 1944–1947: From Liberation to the Truman Doctrine. (U. of Missouri Press, 2002). 287 pp. online
McGhee, George. The U.S.-Turkish-NATO Middle East Connection: How the Truman Doctrine and Turkey's NATO Entry Contained the Soviets in the Middle East. (1990). 224 pp.
Meiertöns, Heiko: The Doctrines of US Security Policy – An Evaluation under International Law (2010), .
Offner, Arnold A. "'Another Such Victory': President Truman, American Foreign Policy, and the Cold War." Diplomatic History 1999 23(2): 127–155.
Pach Jr., Chester J. Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military Assistance Program, 1945–1950, (1991) online edition
Purvis, Hoyt. "Tracing the Congressional Role: US Foreign Policy and Turkey." in Legislating Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2019) pp. 23–76.
Spalding, Elizabeth Edwards. The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, And the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism (2006) online
Spalding, Elizabeth Edwards. "The enduring significance of the Truman doctrine." Orbis 61.4 (2017): 561–574.
External links
Truman Library website with papers related to the Truman Doctrine
Full text of the speech
Full text, audio, video excerpt of the speech
Cartoon on display at the LoC
1947 in American politics
Presidency of Harry S. Truman
Foreign policy doctrines of the United States
History of the foreign relations of the United States
Soviet Union–United States relations
1947 in international relations
Soviet Union–Turkey relations
Turkey–United States relations
Greece–United States relations
March 1947 events in the United States
1947 introductions
Military globalization
Anti-communism in the United States