Us History Guided Reading and Review Section One Pressure to Expand

The Truman Doctrine, 1947

With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry Southward. Truman established that the The states would provide political, military machine and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the U.s.a., to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.

President Harry Truman

The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered past President Truman before a articulation session of Congress on March 12, 1947. The immediate cause for the oral communication was a recent announcement by the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic aid to the Greek Regime in its civil war against the Greek Communist Political party. Truman asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. He also asked Congress to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British assist.

At the time, the U.S. Authorities believed that the Soviet Union supported the Greek Communist state of war try and worried that if the Communists prevailed in the Greek civil war, the Soviets would ultimately influence Greek policy. In fact, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained from providing any support to the Greek Communists and had forced Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Tito to follow suit, much to the detriment of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. However, a number of other foreign policy problems as well influenced President Truman's decision to actively aid Greece and Turkey. In 1946, four setbacks, in detail, had served to effectively torpedo whatsoever chance of achieving a durable post-state of war rapprochement with the Soviet Union: the Soviets' failure to withdraw their troops from northern Islamic republic of iran in early 1946 (as per the terms of the Tehran Declaration of 1943); Soviet attempts to pressure the Iranian Government into granting them oil concessions while supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran; Soviet efforts to strength the Turkish Government into granting them base and transit rights through the Turkish Straits; and, the Soviet Authorities's rejection of the Baruch plan for international control over nuclear energy and weapons in June 1946.

In light of the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Matrimony and the appearance of Soviet meddling in Greek and Turkish affairs, the withdrawal of British assistance to Greece provided the necessary catalyst for the Truman Administration to reorient American foreign policy. Accordingly, in his speech, President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of assistance to both the Greek and Turkish Governments and support the dispatch of American civilian and war machine personnel and equipment to the region.

Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political stability of the Middle East. This could not be immune in low-cal of the region's immense strategic importance to U.Southward. national security. Truman also argued that the United States was compelled to assist "free peoples" in their struggles against "totalitarian regimes," considering the spread of absolutism would "undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States." In the words of the Truman Doctrine, information technology became "the policy of the U.s.a. to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Truman argued that the United States could no longer stand by and allow the forcible expansion of Soviet totalitarianism into free, contained nations, because American national security now depended upon more than just the physical security of American territory. Rather, in a precipitous break with its traditional avoidance of extensive foreign commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere during peacetime, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to actively offer aid to preserve the political integrity of autonomous nations when such an offer was deemed to be in the best interest of the U.s.a..

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Source: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/truman-doctrine