Truman Doctrine

Truman Doctrine, name given, by analogy with the Monroe Doctrine, to a policy enunciated on March 12, 1947, by President Harry S. Truman of the United States. The immediate purpose of his address to Congress was to propose a programme of economic aid to Greece and Turkey. Those two countries had been under sustained Communist pressure for the previous two years: Turkey by way of Soviet diplomatic pressure for a special status at the Turkish Straits, a traditional Russian goal, and Greece by an indigenous campaign by Communist guerrillas (see Greek Civil War). In fact, the latter were receiving only limited support from Joseph Stalin, who seems to have retained some respect for the spheres of interest agreed upon at the Yalta Conference in 1945, but the impression in the West was of orchestrated Soviet pressure.

Following the end of World War II in 1945, both Greece and Turkey had been receiving political, economic, and some military support from Great Britain but the severe winter of 1946-1947 exposed the weakness of the British economy. Consequently, in February 1947 the British government warned the United States that it would have to cease its assistance to the Greeks and Turks. In a few weeks of concentrated analysis and planning, the Truman administration, inspired particularly by the soon-to-be Secretary of State Dean Acheson, decided to take over the British task.

In his speech the President promised United States support to any nation willing to resist Communist pressure or aggression. Drawing a contrast between free and aggressive societies, Truman declared: “it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation ...”. It was his hope that this could be done “primarily through economic and financial aid”, and the Marshall Plan (see European Recovery Program) of economic assistance followed as a logical extension in June. By April 1949, partly stimulated by the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 to May 1949), a military component had been added by the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The significance of Truman's speech and its claim to the status of a doctrine derived from the fact that the response to an immediate and localized crisis was cast in terms of a general principle that set the United States' course for the ensuing Cold War with Communism. The occasion was also a landmark in the emergence of bipartisanship in support for such a policy; hitherto isolationist Republicans being set on the road to assertive internationalism by their Senate leader, Arthur Vandenberg, himself previously an isolationist. The characterization of Truman's pronouncement as a “doctrine” followed almost immediately upon its enunciation, and set a pattern whereby several subsequent presidents, including Truman's immediate successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, were each credited with a doctrine.