Harry S. Truman: Truman Doctrine

Context

The Truman Doctrine must be understood within the context of the emerging cold war and the impact of this conflict upon American foreign policy as well as domestic politics. The wartime alliance between Americans and Soviets began to unravel during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, with disputes over the postwar reconstruction of Germany and free elections in the Eastern European nations liberated by the Soviet military. Increasing concern about the democratic future of Eastern Europe was expressed by Britain's prime minister Winston Churchill in a speech at a college in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, which employed the expression iron curtain, a concept endorsed by President Truman and that characterized the Soviet-controlled areas of the world as existing in isolation behind an invisible barrier to reciprocal communication.

Truman, influenced by the Soviet expert George Kennan's argument that a tough policy was needed to deal with Soviet expansionism, seized on the opportunity presented by the crisis in Greece. On February 21, 1947, the British Embassy informed the U.S. State Department that Great Britain could no longer afford to extend assistance to the Greek government engaged in civil war with Communist forces. While President Truman claimed that the Soviets were funding the insurgency, the political situation in Greece was more ambiguous, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was evidently adhering to a 1944 understanding with Churchill that he would not offer military aid to the Greek Communists.

Truman, however, was convinced that the Soviets were engaged in a policy of expansionism that had to be checked. In early 1946 the Soviets refused to withdraw from northern Iran, as stipulated in the 1943 Tehran Conference, while pressuring the Iranian government to grant them oil concessions. Truman also was concerned about Soviet efforts to force the Turkish government to grant transit rights through the Turkish Straits as well as Soviet rejection of the United States' Baruch Plan for sharing atomic energy.

Truman was thus not in a mood to compromise when he met with congressional leaders at the White House on February 27, 1947. Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told Truman that Congress would authorize aid for Greece if the president would explain to a joint session of Congress that Soviet expansionism into Greece threatened Turkey and the entire Middle East. The president responded with the Truman Doctrine, followed by the Marshall Plan, which he considered related efforts. The Marshall Plan, announced by Secretary of State George C. Marshall at a Harvard University speech on June 5, 1947, called for spending more than $12 billion for European recovery, checking the popularity of Communism, and providing an outlet for American exports. Congressional approval for the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan in 1947 provided the framework for the policy of containing the Soviet Union that the United States pursued throughout the cold war.

The Truman administration, perceiving that American interests were threatened in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, moved to limit dissent on the home front. On March 22, 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which instigated a review process to identify “disloyal persons” within the government. Anti-Communism would be a dominant element in American politics for the next forty years.