Truman's Doctrine Containing Soviet Expansion Essay

Truman's Doctrine Containing Soviet Expansion - Essay Example The relations between Soviet Union and the United States were driven by an interaction of socio-economic, political and ideological differences which led to the deterioration of relationships between the two superpowers of the world. The alliance between the two countries was purely strategic because there was a remarkable difference between the ideologies followed by the two countries. USA was the flag bearer of Capitalism whereas USSR was the country who gave birth to the communist ideology so a clash of interest always existed between the two nations leading to an eternal distrust (Kegley & Blanton, 2011). During the War, the Nazi forces in France, Italy and lower countries of Europe were defeated by the US and British forces whereas the Russian forces defeated the Nazis in Germany and Eastern Europe. The Soviet army continued to occupy the Eastern European states during the wartime and the US or the other Western powers were not in a position to do anything about it at that time. Communist governments were imposed on the Eastern European countries by USSR and Stalin started controlling these states directly and made no secret of it during the various postwar conferences. Germany was also divided into four zones controlled by USSR, USA, Britain and France. USSR considered Germany as a threat to its Communist state because of the past experiences and did not want to create a strong Germany therefore it continued to weaken Eastern Europe by taking equipment and materials (Sulzberger, 1985). The Soviet leadership was afraid of the rapid improvement in the lifestyle of people in the capitalist nations and feared that the expanding capitalism will pose a threat to the communist ideology. As a counter policy USSR started imposing communist governments in the countries controlled by the USSR after the war and communism took hold of most of the Eastern Europe and a few countries in the Far East. Harry S. Truman became the 33rd President of the United States after th e death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. Truman had to face a lot of challenges at the very beginning of his days in the office of the President of US and he managed to devise some very efficient policies to put an end to a number of internal and external crises (McCullough, 2003). Truman’s days in the office were marked by the end of the Second World War and he soon became aware of the expansionist expeditions of the Soviet Union. He considered the expansion of the USSR and the conversion of a considerable number of countries to communism a threat to the global peace, security and freedom. Truman set forth a policy in 1947 which clearly stated that the US will give economic and military aid to the countries which were under a threat of falling into the Soviet sphere. In one of his speeches he stated that US would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent USSR to establish a communist government in these countries. This policy of containing the expansi on of communism in the world was later termed as Truman’s Doctrine (Calvocressi, 2001). Truman clearly stated the objectives of the Doctrine and made it part of the foreign policy of the United States, in fact the various important decisions of future like the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO were also based on the principles laid in the Truman’s Doctrine. The purpose of the doctrine was to support free