Truman Doctrine Pushed America Into World Politics

America after World War II occupied a preeminent place in the world, and many nations, particularly in Europe, looked to the United States to help them rebuild and protect them from a growing Soviet threat. None of this stopped the country from wanting to go back to the good old days of isolation, where the world’s problems were the world’s problems, and America could go on about its business. That was not meant to be.

By 1947, Great Britain, the premier imperial power of the world before the rise of fascism, could no longer shoulder the burden of an empire upon which the sun never set. Economic troubles forced them to drastically pare back their international reach. This included supporting Greece and Turkey in their fight against the communists.

The Turks were feeling pressure from the Soviets, who were demanding unfettered access through the Turkish Straits which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Greeks were fighting a communist insurgency backed by Josip Tito’s Yugoslavia. Without British aid, best estimates gave the Greek anti-communists weeks before they would knuckle under. Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson told President Harry Truman that a domino effect would lead to the fall of Turkey and other nations in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

Truman went before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947 to make the case for aid to Greece and Turkey. In his speech, Truman called for $400 million in economic assistance to both nations (approximately $4.5 billion it today’s dollars).

“I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” Truman said. “Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.”

Truman kept the focus on those two nations, and Acheson and Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a staunch internationalist, both promised Congress that this call for aid would not establish an ongoing pattern of open-ended aid to other nations.

That is precisely what opponents of Truman’s policy feared. Columnist Walter Lippmann said that the president’s speech sounded like an ideological crusade. “It cannot be controlled. Its effects cannot be predicted.” Others concluded that the policy would be needlessly antagonistic toward Russia, or at the least, a waste of money.

The majority came out in support of Truman’s speech. The press embraced his leadership, and while many Americans at the time were skeptical of anything that might interrupt the growing economy, the public was also decidedly anti-communist. A little over a month after Truman’s speech, Congress overwhelmingly passed his aid package for Greece and Turkey.

What became known as the Truman Doctrine would lay the groundwork for how the Cold War would end up being waged, despite what Acheson and Vandenberg said, and what Truman probably thought, back in ’47. David McCullough notes in his epic biography of Truman that there was no radical or abrupt change in American foreign policy. Historian John Lewis Gaddis agrees. The U.S. was already on record opposing the spread of communism in Europe and elsewhere. The Truman Doctrine was merely a declaration of that policy. From that point forward, the world would know exactly where America stood on communism. And it would be up to the U.S. to stick to its word.