From the Truman Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine | Contemporary History | |

An overview and comparative analysis of two decisive American foreign policy doctrines breed from fear that impacted the world. |

Fear and the reaction to it has been a driving force throughout human evolution, it has helped shape both our physical and social development. Fear and the reaction to it in politics, has helped create and shape everything from our borders and languages, to our technology and religion. At its very best it serves as a common uniting factor that all people share. At its worst it has lead to some of our greatest wars. The Truman and Bush Doctrines are two such policy sets rooted in fears that helped shape the world we know today.

On the 12th of March 1947, then President Harry S. Truman addressed a joint session of Congress requesting $400 million in military funding and other foreign aid to support the struggling nations of Turkey and Greece. Truman implored Congress to act quickly to provide aid and support to both nations. Truman described the current state of affairs in Greece as an environment of “political chaos” and that its internal security and very survival were threatened by “terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists…” (Truman, 1947) In this speech lay the foundation for the resulting Cold War, and idea that the spread of Communism should be halted and contained. With further analysis of this same speech one can also locate early indication of how America would emerge in the post World War II, arena. The Truman Doctrine was to become the defining policy set that governed and promoted the United States foreign policies over the next 50 years. President Truman himself described it as "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Truman was able to successfully leverage America’s fears over Communism by arguing that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid that was thought to be so urgently needed, that they would inevitably fall victim to the persuasions of Communism with grave and echoing consequences throughout the region.

No longer could the United States rely on British colonialism as the great policing power of the world. With Great Britain now near bankruptcy after World War II, Truman proposed that a new police power was needed in the world. Obviously President Truman proposed that that power should be the United States itself. The Truman Doctrine policy won the support of the Republican controlled congress. Truman rationalized that by sending $400 million in American money, but no military forces, to the region, that Communism could be contained and controlled.

The Republican controlled Congress readily approved the request. The net effect was to end the Communist threat to Greece and the region, and in 1952 both Greece and Turkey joined the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This military alliance guaranteed their protection and sovereignty. (PBS American Experience, 2005)

When Truman spoke to the Congress of Greece’s situation in such dire and straight forward terms, explaining that if the United States failed to act the likely result would be the spread of further instability and strife in the region to nearby Turkey. President Truman was able to encapsulate the fears of many American’s including those in Congress over the spread of Communism. The later vaunted so-called Domino Theory would further shape American foreign policy as greatly if not greater than Truman Doctrine itself. Essentially hidden in plain sight, was the fear itself, Communism. Truman posited that America must take on a much broader role of international involvement. The Truman Doctrine promoted a massive transition in American foreign policy. In just a little more than two decades, gone was old sentiment of American isolationism. Truman proclaimed the necessity for America’s direct intervention and involvement as one of a moral and civic international responsibility. (McGhee, 1990) The idea of America as an international rookie police power was born.

The Domino Theory continued and promoted the fear of a real threat from the unchecked spread of Communism. In the simplest terms if a force did not intervene to stop the tumbling effect of collapsing governments to the forces of Communism, the ultimate result would a world dominated by Communist ideals and principles. The ideals and principles of Communism ran so contrary to the American ideals of freedom and democracy that, that Truman and many of those following in his office felt strongly that they should be stopped by nearly any means necessary. What emerged from this fear based doctrine resulted in the Cold War, the associated Nuclear Arms race, The Vietnam War, and even the Space Race. (Gaddis, 1974)

In the days that follow the 9/11 attacks upon the United States, Americans searched for answers to the lingering questions of why the attacks happened. Most American’s were gleefully asleep in the months prior to the attack as then President George W. Bush first began to formulate a bold new stance in American foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine as it would labeled in June of 2001 by political columnist Charles Krauthammer (Krauthammer, 2001) is far more fluid and reaching than the Truman Doctrine ever was.

The Bush Doctrine cannot be firmly grouped down to one speech of proposals, but rather as Krauthammer proposed was series of related foreign policy principles by the Bush administration. When Krauthammer first coined the label of the Bush Doctrine, he was describing the Bush administrations unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 between the United States and the former Soviet Union and the United States, and the United States rejecting of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty attempting to limit the impact of fossil fuel emissions.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the Bush Doctrine further evolved to include an additional pillars besides American unilateralism. These additional pillars of preemptive war or preventive war and the policy philosophy that the United States should promote the spread of democracy throughout the world would become defining components of the Bush Doctrine.

One can easily argue that out of conflict rises prosperity. Just as the fabled Phoenix arose from the ashes of conflict born anew, the Truman Doctrine developed out of fear, helped to shape American prosperity. Wars the preparation for them and the recovery from them all result in economic and technological advancements.