Jour : 22 mars 2016

Catégories
Archives

Truman Doctrine : containment or Encirclement of Soviet Union and suppression of all revolution ?

Encirclement

Truman Doctrine : containment or Encirclement of Soviet Union and suppression of all revolutions ?

The Truman Doctrine is included in the message read by President Harry Truman to a joint session of the two Houses of Congress on marsh 12, 1947. The official and public reason for Truman message was Greece and turkey where « the Terroristic activities of several thousand armed men, led by communists had created a situation with which the Greek and Turkish Governments could not cope. In order to cope with these « communist subversion », Truman proposed to « help free people to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes »; To Truman, it was matter of life or death to choice between alternative ways of life, between free institutions and the other by terror and oppression  he believed that United States must implement a new policy aiming at supporting free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure » . by concluding his message, Truman asked for four hundred million dollars for Greece and Turkey and authority to detail civilian and military personal to them. In short words, the United States ought to suppress wherever a communiits rebellion developed the United Stets would become the world’s anti-communist, anti-Russian policeman.

Catégories
Archives

The Truman Doctrine and the Open Door policy

Open door policy

The Truman Doctrine and the Open Door policy

On march 6, 1947, President Truman made a speech at Baylor University on foreign economic policy laying down what we called the Truman Doctrine. In his speech, Truman announced united States planetary crusade for  : (1) rule of freedom of enterprise and (2) Containment of communism. Truman tried to explain that freedom of enterprise was more important than peace and that freedom of speech were dependent on freedom of enterprise. State trade or planned economy should be considered as contrary to both peace and freedom. For Truman, the Government of the United States had to fight both for markets and for raw materials and what was serious enough but more ominous in Truman’s speech that « the whole world should adopt the American system » and that « the American system could survive in America only if it became a world system.

Baylor speech was the pursuit of the American ideology of industrial Manifest  destiny and it fell into line with the old American open Door policy which can be traced back according to William Appleman Williams to James Madison’s federalist#10 but it really began at the end of the nineteenth century from McKinley onward and John Hay’s China-oriented declarations of 1899 and 1900;

Catégories
Archives

United States and the making of Europe

Europe cold war

United States and the making of Europe

In early November 1946, the Republicans had won control of both houses of Congress and this unexpected election of an extremely conservative Republican Congress  gave an impetus to the anti-communist crusade inaugurated by Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri.  In their campaign of 1946, the Republicans moved over to the offensive and identified all dissent voice with communism which was one of the most potent forces in their electoral victory. It was expected the implementation of  a conservative foreign policy and a strong line against communism and Russia everywhere in the world. This new shift in American foreign policy in the aftermath of WWII was symbolized by The Truman doctrine.

 On January 17, 1947, John Foster Dulles adviser to the State department made a speech urging Western Europe to unite economically around the coal and steel power of the Rhine basin as a bulwark against Soviet Russia. Echoing Winston Churchill, Dulles was trying to establish hurriedly a military bloc of the united States, Britain and France. French diplomatic circles approved Dulles proposition. Dulles sought to restore Germany as bulwark against the Soviet Union and supported her reconstruction by pushing the German industrialists and cartelists to power.  Dulles’s posture was not starnge considering Mr Dulles long pre-war association with the same German interest.

Translate »