"The Real Truman Doctrine and Its Consequences" Topic

"On March 12, 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman announced what commentators and historians have ever since called the "Truman Doctrine." The immediate purpose of Truman's speech was to persuade Congress to provide economic assistance to Greece and Turkey in the early years of the Cold War. The British had informed the State Department that they lacked the resources to continue aiding both countries. Truman's rhetoric, however, vastly exceeded that limited goal. "It must be the policy of the United States," he said, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities and outside pressures."

Truman's statement has been widely praised as a defining moment when America accepted the responsibility for containing the spread of communism. In hindsight, however, the seeds of America's costly stalemate in Korea, its defeat in Vietnam, U.S. geopolitical setbacks of the late 1970s, and the U.S. debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, were planted that day. A few farsighted thinkers at the time understood the implications of the Truman Doctrine. George Kennan, who served in the State Department as head of the Policy Planning Staff, expressed to U.S. policymakers his reservations about the seemingly unlimited commitments reflected in Truman's words. The American journalist Walter Lippmann publicly derided the policy's expansive view of U.S. interests. Lippmann famously wrote that U.S. commitments needed to be aligned with its resources…"
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