Truman Doctrine and War

Truman Doctrine Just 2 years after the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman delivered a speech to the U.S. Congress concerning the need to contain the spread of Soviet Union-sponsored communism which, with various refinements, would become the cornerstone of American foreign policy for the next 4 decades (Trainor, 1998). To determine its overarching impact, this paper reviews the relevant literature in order to provide an identification of the author of the Truman Doctrine, why it is important in relation to the larger themes of the Cold War era.

Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning the Truman Doctrine are presented in the conclusion. In a speech entitled, "Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey" delivered on March 12, 1947 to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S.

Truman proclaimed that the foreign policy of the United States would be focused on the containment of Soviet Union-sponsored communism, an action that was fueled by a request for $400 million in military and financial assistance from Greece which was being threatened by a rebellion led by communist insurgents (Foner, 2010). In response to Truman's speech and the Truman doctrine it defined, the U.S. Congress appropriated $400 million in April 1974 in order to provide Turkey and Greece with the means to counter their growing internal communist threats (Casey, 2016).

In sum, the Truman Doctrine was important in relation to the larger Cold War themes that were emerging during this period in American history because it represented America's "pledge to support nations struggling against a communist takeover through any means short of committing U.S. troops" (Trainor, 1998, p. 42). This initial self-imposed limitation of not committing U.S. military forces, though, was discarded following the invasion of South Korea by North Korea in June 1950 (Trainor, 1998).

With Truman's timely support, the United Nations had been created the year before the North Korean invasion and the UN Security Council approved a U.S.-led coalition against the North Korean invaders (Anderson, 2010). Despite fairly disappointing contributions by UN member-states to the war effort in Korea, the U.S. enjoyed the support of the free world in this military engagement that it would have otherwise lacked (Anderson, 2010).

Notwithstanding the military stalemate that ended the Korean conflict in 1953 in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the Truman Doctrine proved to the world that the United States would stand by its allies in containing communism wherever and whenever it threatened them, a policy that would have profound implications for America's entry in the war in Vietnam in 1954 (Merrill, 2006). In fact, Truman involved in U.S.

in the war in Vietnam as early as 1950 when he provided financial and military assistance to the French who were fighting the Viet Cong at the time (Merrill, 2006). Here again, despite the failure to achieve a military victory in Vietnam, many analysts today agree that without the Truman Doctrine guiding American foreign policy during the second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union may have succeeded in spreading communism throughout Southeast Asia and beyond (Merrill, 2006).

Conclusion The second half of the 20th century was a turbulent period for the U.S. and its allies, and Soviet attempts to extend their hegemony far beyond their immediate neighbors became the focal point of America's containment efforts to.