Editing Containment (section)

==Harry S. Truman==
{{Main article|Truman Doctrine}}
After Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1946 elections, President Truman, a Democrat, made a dramatic speech that is often considered to mark the beginning of the [[Cold War]]. In March 1947, he requested that Congress appropriate $400 million in aid to the Greek and Turkish governments, which were fighting communist subversion.<ref name="Truman">[[s:Truman Doctrine|President Harry S. Truman's Address Before a Joint Session of Congress]], March 12, 1947.</ref> Truman pledged to, "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."<ref name="Truman"/> This pledge became known as the [[Truman Doctrine]]. Portraying the issue as a mighty clash between "totalitarian regimes" and "free peoples", the speech marks the adoption of containment as official US policy. Congress appropriated the money.

Truman's motives on that occasion have been the subject of considerable scholarship and several schools of interpretation. In the orthodox explanation of [[Herbert Feis]], a series of aggressive Soviet actions in 1945–1947 in Poland, Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere awakened the American public to the new danger to freedom to which Truman responded.<ref name="Larson9">Larsen, Deborah Welch, ''Origins of Containment'', p. 9.</ref> In the revisionist view of [[William Appleman Williams]], Truman's speech was an expression of longstanding American expansionism.<ref name="Larson9"/> In the'' [[realpolitik]]'' view of [[Lynn E. Davis]], Truman was a naive idealist who unnecessarily provoked the Soviets by couching disputes in terms like democracy and freedom that were alien to the communist vision.<ref name="Larson15">Larson, p. 15.</ref>

According to a psychological analysis by Deborah Larson, Truman felt a need to prove his decisiveness and feared that aides would make unfavorable comparisons between him and his predecessor, Roosevelt.<ref name="Larson147">Larson, p. 147.</ref> "I am here to make decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong I am going to take them", he once said.<ref name="Larson145-46">Larson, pp 145–46.</ref>

The drama surrounding the announcement of the Truman Doctrine catered to the president's self-image of a strong and decisive leader, but his real decision-making process was more complex and gradual. The timing of the speech was not a response to any particular Soviet action but to the fact that the Republican Party had just gained control of Congress.<ref name="Larson302">Larson, p. 302.</ref> Truman was little involved in drafting the speech and did not himself adopt the hard-line attitude that it suggested until several months later.<ref name="LarsonXI">Larson, p. xi., p. 303</ref>

The British, with their own position weakened by economic distress, urgently called on the U.S. to take over the traditional British role in Greece.<ref>Lawrence S. Wittner, ''American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949'' (1982)</ref> Undersecretary of State [[Dean Acheson]] took the lead in Washington, warning congressional leaders in late February 1947 that if the United States did not take over from the British, the result most probably would be a "Soviet breakthrough" that "might open three continents to Soviet penetration."<ref>{{cite book|author=Dean Acheson|title=Present at the creation: my years in the State Department|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OirSz3Wtaa0C&pg=PA219|year=1987|publisher=W W Norton|page=219|isbn=9780393304121}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=James Chace|author-link=James Chace|title=Acheson: The Secretary Of State Who Created The American World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Jf32GR7t3IC&pg=PA166|year=2008|publisher=Simon & Schuster|pages=166–67|isbn=9780684864822}}</ref> Truman was explicit about the challenge of communism taking control of Greece. He won wide support from both parties as well as experts in foreign policy inside and outside the government. It was strongly opposed by the left, notably by former Vice President [[Henry A. Wallace]], who ran against Truman in the 1948 presidential campaign.<ref>John M. Schuessler, "Absorbing The First Blow: Truman And The Cold War," ''White House Studies'' (2009) 9#3 pp 215–231.</ref>

Truman, under the guidance of Acheson, followed up his speech with a series of measures to contain Soviet influence in Europe, including the [[Marshall Plan]], or European Recovery Program, and [[NATO]], a 1949 military alliance between the U.S. and Western European nations. Because containment required detailed information about communist moves, the government relied increasingly on the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA). Established by the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA conducted espionage in foreign lands, some of it visible, more of it secret. Truman approved a classified statement of containment policy called NSC 20/4 in November 1948, the first comprehensive statement of security policy ever created by the United States. The Soviet Union's first nuclear test in 1949 prompted the National Security Council to formulate a revised security doctrine. Completed in April 1950, it became known as [[NSC 68]].<ref>Efstathios T. Fakiolas, "Kennan's Long Telegram and NSC-68: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis," ''East European Quarterly'' (1997) 31#4 pp 415–433.</ref>  It concluded that a massive military buildup was necessary to deal with the Soviet threat. According to the report, drafted by [[Paul Nitze]] and others:

{{blockquote|In the words of the Federalist (No. 28) "The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief." The mischief may be a global war or it may be a Soviet campaign for limited objectives. In either case, we should take no avoidable initiative which would cause it to become a war of annihilation, and if we have the forces to defeat a Soviet drive for limited objectives it may well be to our interest not to let it become a global war.<ref name="Nitze">''[https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68-4.htm NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security]''</ref>}}