Truman Doctrine's Enduring Legacy

Sixty years ago on March 12, a plain- spoken politician from middle America cemented the promotion of democracy as the centerpiece of U.S. policy.

 

President Harry Truman, who had apprehensively assumed the presidency on the death of Franklin Roosevelt, knew the benefits of democracy and opportunity. The man from Independence, Missouri, personified democracy's knack for finding greatness in men and women at a time of great need. He developed the Truman Doctrine, the formal commitment of the United States to stand in defense of freedom after World War II. His legacy is as relevant now as it was then.

 

The defense of freedom has animated the actions of every president from Washington through Lincoln to Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. But until Truman became president, no U.S. leader had so clearly committed America to support for subjugated peoples around the globe. Despite Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the isolationist tradition remained strong, and many believed that the United States after 1945 would retreat to the narrow view of America's interests in the world that had proven so tragically inadequate in the 1930s.

 

All that changed on March 12, 1947, when Truman told a joint session of Congress: "I believe 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."

 

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