Analysis: Truman Doctrine Speech
The Truman Doctrine Speech, delivered by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, marked a significant shift in American foreign policy in the context of the emerging Cold War. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States faced a new geopolitical landscape characterized by the Soviet Union's aggressive expansion into Eastern Europe and its support for Communist movements in nations like Greece and Turkey. Truman articulated a policy of containment, which aimed to prevent the spread of Communism by providing financial and military support to nations resisting Soviet influence. He emphasized that the U.S. had a responsibility to assist free peoples who were under threat, highlighting the ideological battle between democracy and totalitarianism.
The speech arose from concerns about the potential fall of Greece and Turkey to Communist control, which could lead to further Soviet expansion, a scenario encapsulated in the "domino theory." Truman's declaration that the U.S. could no longer revert to isolationism underscored the nation’s new role as a global superpower. This marked a pivotal moment in U.S. history, setting the stage for a prolonged period of Cold War dynamics and shaping international relations for decades to come. The Truman Doctrine laid the groundwork for future American interventions and a commitment to support allies in the face of perceived threats from Communism.
Analysis: Truman Doctrine Speech
Date: March 12, 1947
Author: Harry S. Truman
Genre: speech
Summary Overview
Less than two years after the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman gave a speech in which he articulated a new American foreign policy that would become known as the Truman Doctrine, intended to address the postwar geopolitical climate. Since the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had expanded its reach throughout Eastern Europe and was threatening to spur Communist revolutions in the Middle East. The focus of Truman's speech was the situation in Greece and Turkey, two nations that were threatened in different ways by the spread of Communism. Though the threats were different, the response, Truman argued, needed to be the same—financial aid to help contain the tide of Communist expansion. The United States was only just becoming accustomed to its new role as a world superpower; in the postwar order, Truman asserted, the United States was the only nation able to provide such aid, and the country had an ongoing responsibility to safeguard the world from the spread of Communism.
Defining Moment
In the two years following the defeat of Nazi Germany, US relations with its wartime ally the Soviet Union had changed dramatically. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union had agreed that the nations Germany had conquered during the war should be able to freely choose their governments through democratic elections. Very quickly after the conclusion of the war, however, it became clear that the Soviet Union was doing everything it could to ensure that all of the nations along its borders came under Communist rule. This direct disregard for the Yalta Agreement meant that the United States now had a new foe in a “cold war,” which pitted democracy against totalitarianism.
American foreign policy experts struggled to determine the best course of action; George F. Kennan, who had perhaps the most familiarity with the Soviet government, having served as a US diplomat in Moscow for seven years, articulated what he saw as the reasons for Soviet aggressiveness in his “long telegram” in February 1946. To Kennan, Soviet expansionism was shaped by Russia's history of imperialistic conquest as well as by Marxist ideology, which saw Communism in an ongoing war against capitalism. He believed the only policy that could stop the Soviets' expansionist influence was one of containment, which required a commitment by the United States to the long-term limitation of the Soviets to their own sphere of influence. This had dramatic implications for American policy, as Kennan had no doubt that the Soviets would continue their drive to expand for the foreseeable future.
The need to articulate a new policy came to a head in February 1947, when the British government, which had suffered far greater economic hardship than the United States during World War II, informed American officials that it would no longer be able to provide economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey, both of which were facing important threats related to Communist expansionism. In Greece, leftist rebels, supported by Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, had waged an insurgency against the Greek royal government. In Turkey, the Soviet Union was aggressively seeking to share control over the Dardanelles and the Bosporus straits, which connect the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, where the Soviets had large naval bases. Truman administration officials believed that if Greece and Turkey were overtaken by Communists, the appeasement of Soviet demands would only embolden the Soviets to go further, and country after country would fall to Communism—an idea that became popularly known as the “domino theory.” The only way to stop the dominos from falling—or to contain the Soviet threat to Greece, Turkey, and the rest of the free world—was for the United States to take an active role in international affairs by meeting Soviet aggression with countervailing political, economic, and military force whenever necessary. With this policy in mind, Truman spoke to a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947.
Author Biography
Following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, in the last days of World War II, Harry S. Truman became president of the United States. The peace that followed the war was short-lived, however, as almost immediately, Truman was faced with a new kind of war, a “cold war,” pitting the United States against its wartime ally the Soviet Union. Relations began to break down even before World War II had ended, due to the ideological differences between the two nations, with the United States supporting capitalism and democracy, while the Soviet Union championed socialism and an authoritarian form of government. Though these differences had existed since the Russian Revolution in 1917, they took on geopolitical overtones after World War II and became a much more pressing concern for Truman. Much of Truman's presidency was defined by the nascent Cold War, and in 1947, Truman sought to define what the US government's response to the Soviet threat would be.
Document Analysis
The Truman Doctrine represents a dramatic turning point in the history of American foreign policy. President Harry S. Truman spoke to a joint session of Congress and announced a new direction in US foreign policy, marking what many consider to be the beginning of the Cold War. In his speech, he speaks directly about the situation faced by Greece and Turkey as they sought to avoid Communist domination. In a larger sense, however, Truman used the speech to articulate a new vision of the United States' role in the world. According to Truman, the United States could no longer shrink back to an isolated existence as it had at the conclusion of previous wars. A new geopolitical landscape, a new position as a world superpower, and the spread of Communism created the need for a new strategy to deal with the situation.
Truman begins by explaining the two crises in Greece and Turkey. The Communist-led insurgency in Greece, funded by the Communist government of Yugoslavia, threatened to overthrow the pro-Western monarchy. Great Britain had been providing financial assistance to the Greek government but, due to their own economic crisis, were unable to continue. Truman asserts that, without American aid, Greece could very well fall to the Communists. In Turkey, the Soviet Union was pressuring the small, weak nation to share control over the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. Without assistance from the United States, the Soviet Union could dominate the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. Truman speaks briefly about how he had considered asking the United Nations (UN) to assist Greece and Turkey, as the settlement of international disputes was the very reason for its existence, but he came to the conclusion that the situation needed immediate assistance of a greater extent than the UN could provide.
The larger issue, however, was the choice the nations of the world faced between a way of life “based upon the will of the majority” that had free elections and institutions as well as guaranteed protection of individual freedoms, and a way of life “based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority,” where the state is coercive and totalitarian, suppressing individual and social freedoms. The role of the United States in this new world was to contain Soviet expansion by helping nations such as Greece to “become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.” Truman sums up his intentions by stating 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.” According to Truman, the United States must meet any challenge put forward by the Soviet Union and its desire to expand Communist control, arguing that “there is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn. No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support.”
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Bostdorff, Denise M. Proclaiming the Truman Doctrine: The Cold War Call to Arms. College Station: Texas A&M UP, 2008. Print.
Jones, Howard. “A New Kind of War”: America's Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.
Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Offner, Arnold A. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002. Print.
Pechatnov, Vladimir O. “The Soviet Union and the World, 1944–1953.” The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Origins. Vol. 1. Ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. New York: Cambridge UP, 2010. 90–111. Print.