President Truman delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947. He requested that the US government provide economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to stop them falling under Communist rule. The immediate cause for the speech was a recent announcement by the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman also asked Congress to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British aid. Truman talks about two ways of life in his speech. The first way being that of a free and liberal democracy such as America or Great Britain. He describes the second way as 'the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority' (REFERENCE). There are such authoritarian regimes such as this in North Korea, Burma and until recently, Iraq. The choice facing America was between two opposing and irreconcilable ways of life, between the virtues of democracy and the horrors of totalitarianism. Although the east/west conflict had become more ideologically polarised during the preceding twelve months, the administration had yet to frame it (at least publicly) in a more dichotomous fashion.
By 1947, in the aftermath of World War Two, both Greece and Turkey were suffering multiple problems. 'In 1947, Greece was consumed by a civil war, one that had raged on and off since 1944 but erupted into a full-scale conflict in 1946 with forces of the Greek Communist Party and government forces backed by Great Britain and the U.S. Because it was the Cold War, fear in Washington was The Soviet Union would gain a presence in Greece and the result would be a Soviet Satellite on the Mediterranean' (Gordonskene, 2010). Western Europe had generally been well protected from the reach of the Soviet Union, so a soviet satellite in the Mediterranean would give the Communists greater influence. As well as this 'bitter, internal strife' (REFERENCE), Greece had also just suffered four years of enemy occupation by the Germans. 'When the forces of liberation entered Greece, they found that the retreating Germans had destroyed virtually all the railways, roads, port facilities, communications and merchant marine. More than a thousand villages had been burned. Eighty-five percent of the children were tubercular. Livestock, poultry and draft animals had almost disappeared. Inflation had wiped out practically all savings' (REFERENCE). Turkey also had problems which led them to seek assistance from the US. The Soviet Union was putting pressure on them to revise the Montreux Convention (the protocol governing access to the Dardanelles) to allow for a joint administration of the Turkish straights. The Soviet Union intended this to pave the way toward an eventual establishment of Soviet bases in Turkey.
Truman chooses clear and concise language in this address, he communicates effectively and persuasively and clearly articulates why the two countries require assistance. Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political stability of the Middle East. This could not be allowed in light of the region's immense strategic importance to U.S. national security. The speech is not long and does not veer off the subject, adhering to the golden rules of presenting, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and reiterate what you've just told them. It is appropriate to its target audience and the rhetoric contains appeal to pathos.
With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. Truman did not mention the Soviet Union by name in his speech. The appellation he presented in his in his speech was certainly a commentary on the deteriorating relationship between the United States of America and the Soviet Union after World War Two. The Truman Doctrine was followed by both Republican and Democrat Governments. It is credited with fostering global democracy whilst limiting the influence of an expansionist Soviet Union. However, critics assert that the Truman Doctrine's anti communist obsession led the US to support anti-democratic authoritarian regimes able to procure American aid by claiming they were fighting communism. The Truman Doctrine signalled America's post war embrace of global leadership and ended its long standing policy of isolationism. It marked the onset of the cold war and the adoption of containment as official US foreign policy. However, Truman's speech did not mention containment. Congress passed the aid measures and on 22nd May, Truman signed the bills. The Truman Doctrine had now become the operative principle of US foreign policy.
