The Truman Doctrine Essay

“The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want” (Truman Doctrine). In general, the Cold War was a conflict between communists and anticommunists in a battle for the “hearts and minds of people throughout the world” (Foner 720). In 1947, President Harry Truman changed the ideology surrounding American foreign policy with a speech known as the Truman Doctrine. During a period in which the threat of communism was tremendous, the policy of containment ensured that the United States would execute all necessary actions in order to prevent the spread of Soviet influence (Foner 710). The Cold War was a period of “ideological struggle” (Foner 720) between the communist Soviet Union and the twelve countries of NATO (Foner 713).

A substantial portion of Truman’s speech is about the devastation of the two countries following World War II. Harry Truman felt that giving Greece and Turkey assistance was “an investment in world freedom and world peace (Truman Doctrine).” In Truman’s opinion, the United States’ aid was necessary in order to maintain “national integrity” in Turkey, meaning that without assistance the country was likely to become communist. Truman did not simply ask for the funding of Turkey and Greece, but also for training and instructing personnel of the countries in order to help them become “stable” and “self-sustaining (Truman Doctrine).” The remainder of Truman’s speech surrounds his philosophies regarding communist government. He describes communist government as one that “relies on terror and oppression,” and suppresses “personal freedoms,” while he contrasts democratic government as one that “guarantees of individual liberty” and provides “freedom from political oppression (Truman Doctrine).” This is an important section of his speech because it demonstrates the general purpose of the policy of containment; the Cold War surrounds the fight to stop communism and instead support “freedom loving peoples wherever communism threatened them (Foner 711).” Truman believed that communism took the freedom of choice away from citizens, preventing them from working out “their own destinies in their own way,” and that without the aid of Greece and Turkey, communism would continue to spread “reaching to the West as well as to the East (Truman Doctrine).” During this time, it was not significant whether the countries that needed assistance had democratic government; it was merely imperative that they were anticommunist. Truman concludes his speech by saying that without aid, the hurting countries would lose hope, making