The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy “the Truman Doctrine”

The Cold War and U.S. Diplomacy “The Truman Doctrine”
Luis A. Rodriguez
Professor Miriam Altman
POL 300 Contemporary International Problems
May 2012

Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, had no knowledge or interest in foreign policy before becoming president, and depended on the State Department for foreign policy advice. Truman shifted from FDR's détente to containment as soon as Dean Acheson convinced him the Soviet Union was a long-term threat to American interests. They viewed communism as a secular, millennial religion that informed the Kremlin's worldview and actions and made it the chief threat to American security, liberty, and world peace. They rejected the moral equivalence of democratic and Communist governments and concluded that until the regime in Moscow changed only American and Allied strength could curb the Soviets.
In early 1947 the British government, which was socialist but anti-Communist, secretly told Washington its treasury was empty and it could no longer give military and economic aid to Greece or Turkey, requested the U.S. take over. Acheson convinced Truman to act quickly lest Greece be taken over by its communist partisans who were at the time strongly supported by the Soviet government working through the communist Bulgarian and Yugoslav governments. If Greece fell, Turkey would be helpless and soon the eastern Mediterranean would fall under Stalin’s control. Following Acheson's advice, Truman in 1947 announced the Truman Doctrine of containing Communist expansion by furnishing military and economic American aid to Europe and Asia, and particularly to Greece and Turkey. The Republican Congress, after extensive hearings, approved this historic change in U. S. foreign policy in a bill signed May 22, 1947.
To whip up American support for the policy of containment, Truman overstated the Soviet threat to the United States. In turn, his statements inspired a wave of hysterical anti-communism throughout the country and set the stage for the emergence of McCarthyism.
Containment also called for extensive economic aid to assist the recovery of war-torn Western Europe. With many of the region's nations economically and politically unstable, the United States feared that local communist parties, directed by Moscow, would capitalize on their wartime record of resistance to the Nazis and come to power. Something needed to be done, Secretary of State George Marshall noted, for "the patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate." Marshall was formerly the highest ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces and credited as the chief organizer of the American military victory in World War II. In mid-1947 Marshall asked troubled European nations to draw up a program "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." The Soviets participated in the first planning meeting, then departed rather than share economic data on their resources and problems, and submit to Western controls on the expenditure of the aid. The remaining 16 nations hammered out a request that finally came to $17 thousand million for a four-year period. In early 1948 Congress voted to assist European economic recovery, dubbed the "Marshall Plan," and generally regarded as one of the most successful U.S. foreign policy initiatives in history. He followed up with the Marshall Plan, which was enacted into law as the European Recovery Program (ERP) and led ultimately to NATO, the North Atlantic Alliance for military defense, signed in 1949.
Soviet domination of Eastern Europe alarmed the West. The United States led the effort to create a military alliance to complement economic efforts at containment. In 1949 the United States and 11 other countries established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance based on the principle of collective security. An attack against one was to be considered an attack against all, to be met by appropriate force.
The next year, the United States defined its defense aims clearly. The National Security Council (NSC) undertook a full-fledged review of American foreign and defense policy. The resulting document, known as NSC-68, signaled a new direction in American security policy. Based on the assumption that "the Soviet Union was engaged in a fanatical effort to seize control of all governments wherever possible," the document committed America to assist allied nations anywhere in the world which seemed threatened by Soviet aggression. The United States proceeded to increase defense spending dramatically in response to Soviet threats against Europe and the American, British and French presence in West Berlin.
United States support for the partition of Palestine was crucial to the adoption of the UN partition plan and to the creation of the state of Israel. During World War II, the USA was anxious to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia. President Roosevelt had promised King Saud that the USA would make no policy decisions about Palestine without consulting the Arabs, though Roosevelt tried to enlist Saud's support for allowing Jewish immigration to Palestine. Following Roosevelt's verbal promise to Saud to consult the Arabs about Palestine policy, he reiterated the promise in writing on April 5, 1945. However, a week later, Roosevelt was dead, replaced by Vice President Harry S. Truman, and the end of the war created a different political reality as well as bringing the revelation of massive murder of Jews in the Holocaust.
Truman's support for a Jewish state had evolved over time, shaped by a number of factors. Though Loy Henderson and others in the State Department had insisted that a Jewish state would compromise the position of the US in the Middle East, the opposite position was equally tenable. The notion that Henderson and Marshall advocated, that the Zionists were communists and would therefore side with the USSR was founded on personal prejudice rather than fact, and backfired when the possibility was raised that the USSR would intervene on behalf of Israel, absent US support. The idea that Truman had initially entertained, and that the State Department encouraged, that a Jewish state could only be defended by hundreds of thousands of US troops, proved to be groundless. It is probably this realization more than any that turned the tide, and overcame the single greatest objection. On May 14, 1948, Truman announced recognition of the new state of Israel, making the United States the first major power to do so.
We can see that Truman decisions of containment were successful in stopping and preventing the USSR to take over or influence Turkey, Greece, and Israel. This alone is a great victory for democracy. These three countries also were able to joined NATO. Assisting the British when they couldn’t support Greece and Turkey brought democracy to these countries, strengthen the relationship between US and Great Britain, and was a major step in the containment policy in Europe. Truman was also very successful in forming alliances with other nations; NATO is an example of this. Truman support in favor of a Jewish state proved to be crucial in the recognition of such. A disadvantage of the containment policy is that in order to stop or fight communism the US ended up helping countries and individuals that ended up being dictators and terrorists, for example Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

References

Citizendium. 2012. Harry S. Truman. Retrieved on April 2012 from: http://en.citizendium.org
Conservapedia. 2012. Harry Truman. Retrieved on April 2012 from: http://conservapedia.com/
Country Studies. 2012. Containment. Retrieved on April 2012 from: http://countrystudies.us
MidEast Web. 2012. President Harry S. Truman and US Support for Israeli Statehood. Retrieved on April 2012 from: http://www.mideastweb.org/
Roskin / Berry. 2010. IR: The New World Of International Relations. Chapter 2 America’s changing National Interests