The Truman Doctrine

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By 1946 feelings of partnership between the United States and the Soviet Union had all but dissolved. The Soviet Union and the United States were the determining powers of how the post-World War II world was going to be shaped and divided. Trying to guarantee their safety and wanting to be the world’s largest communist republic, the Soviet’s desired to have friendly countries along its large border while the United States aimed at spreading democracy to the same countries. The U.S was gravely fearful of the USSR spreading its communist ideology across all of war battered Europe (especially because of its proximity to these countries and their post war vulnerability), Asia, and eventually to the United States. Between the Soviet’s tightening …show more content…
Thus, all democratic nations feeling the effects of Communist aggression would no receive political, military, and economic assistance form the United States. Although open ended, the immediate result of this doctrine was on behalf of Greece’s in its civil war because Britain had just declared it was unable to bear the weight of helping defend the Greek government against the Greek communist party. Believing that if Greece fell to the communists, Turkey would follow, and then the eastern Mediterranean would belong to the Soviets, so Truman asked for $400 million dollars to bolster Greece and Turkey. With this doctrine and the act that followed, the United States followed suit with its policy of containment where it no longer held to its previous avoidance of extensive foreign commitments abroad, all in the name of protecting democracy and crushing …show more content…
In response, Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in 1948, the Marshall Plan, which called for $12.8 billion dollars to bring Western Europe back into pre-war prosperity. This extensive investment into the industrialization of Western Europe displayed how America firmly, if not fearfully, believed that if they did not fix and stabilize Europe, communism was going to take it over. Also, Soviet refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan further reinforced the growing division between East and West Europe and strengthened the United States’ desire to stave off, or contain, Soviet