On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman presented this address before a joint session of Congress. His message, known as the Truman Doctrine, asked Congress for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Turkey and Greece.
On Friday, February 21, 1947, the British Embassy informed the U.S. State Department
officials that Great Britain could no longer provide financial aid to the governments
of Greece and Turkey. American policymakers had been monitoring Greece's crumbling
economic and political conditions, especially the rise of the Communist-led
insurgency known as the National Liberation Front, or the EAM/ELAS. The United
States had also been following events in Turkey, where a weak government faced
Soviet pressure to share control of the strategic Dardanelle Straits. When Britain
announced that it would withdraw aid to Greece and Turkey, the responsibility
was passed on to the United States.
In a meeting between Congressmen and State Department officials, Undersecretary
of State Dean Acheson articulated what would later become known as the domino
theory. He stated that more was at stake than Greece and Turkey, for if those
two key states should fall, communism would likely spread south to Iran and
as far east as India. Acheson concluded that not since the days of Rome and
Carthage had such a polarization of power existed. The stunned legislators agreed
to endorse the program on the condition that President Truman stress the severity
of the crisis in an address to Congress and in a radio broadcast to the American
people.
Addressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S.
Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece
and Turkey and established a doctrine, aptly characterized as the Truman Doctrine,
that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next 40 years. President Truman declared,
"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who
are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
The sanction of aid to Greece and Turkey by a Republican Congress indicated
the beginning of a long and enduring bipartisan cold war foreign policy.
(Information excerpted from the National Archives’ Truman Presidential
Museum and Library web site.)
For more information, visit the The Truman Doctrine Study Collection at the National Archives’ Truman Presidential
Museum and Library.
