Truman Doctrine
On March 12, 1947 , the US President Harry S. Truman made a statement before the US Congress that went down in history as the so-called Truman Doctrine . According to this doctrine , it should become the foreign policy principle of the United States of America "to assist free peoples who oppose the intended submission by armed minorities or through external pressure". The aim of the doctrine was to halt the expansion of the Soviet Union and to assist governments in resisting communism.
Truman said the US is ready to respond to the urgent appeal by the Greek government for economic and military support in the Greek Civil War . Turkey, which found itself in a similar situation to Greece, should also receive American aid.
The Truman Doctrine marked the end of the American war coalition with the Soviet Union and marked the beginning of the Cold War . With it the financial engagement of the USA in the containment policy begins .
prehistory
The events in Iran provided the occasion. Beginning in August 1941, the Allied troops had jointly occupied neutral Iran. This created a corridor for western arms deliveries to the Soviet Union, which was in a defensive struggle against the National Socialist German Reich. After the war, this common goal ceased to exist and a power and interest-political confrontation developed between the USA and the Soviet Union. Stalin refused to obey the joint decision taken at the Tehran Conference in 1943 to withdraw Soviet troops from Iran at the end of the war. The newly created Security Council of the United Nations was the first political crisis to deal with the Iran crisis , and Stalin finally withdrew his troops in May 1946. As early as October 1941, Stalin founded the communist Tudeh party and supported the Azerbaijani and Kurdish autonomy movements. The USA had also won the competition for the concessions to extract Iranian oil reserves, while the Soviet Union demanded an Iranian-Soviet oil company with a Soviet majority stake. The fact that autonomous, pro-Soviet satellite republics were finally proclaimed provoked the United States to make a nuclear threat.
In the situation at that time, the countries Turkey , Greece and Iran were specifically meant , but in retrospect also Germany and Austria . Greece and Turkey were thus offered to oppose Sovietization with American help. Turkey has been under pressure from the USSR since 1945 , which, among other things, made territorial demands. Civil war raged again in Greece since 1946 , and the United Kingdom was no longer economically alone to support the conservative Greek government against the communist-dominated rebel army that had emerged from the anti-fascist resistance.
The Truman Doctrine, which clearly spoke of two different forms of life, one characterized by freedom and one characterized by totalitarianism , made a universal claim. She stood thus at the beginning of an American "containment policy" ( containment policy ) toward the USSR and was the beginning of the Cold War .
Justification for the containment policy
The US involvement in the Korean War and the Marshall Plan were justified with the arguments of the Truman Doctrine. The foreign policy aspect of the Monroe Doctrine was finally replaced by the Truman Doctrine . It also forms the justification for the intervention of the USA in internal conflicts of other nations, for example in the Greek Civil War, the Korean War or in Vietnam. The “containment” of the communist sphere of influence in favor of the “free world” effectively assigns the USA the role of a global regulatory power - in contrast to the politics of isolationism prevailing in the interwar period .
Even after the end of the Cold War, this claim of the USA as a global regulatory power still plays a major role in the “ war on terror ”.
Wording (extract)
Speech by US President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 in front of both Houses of Congress.
“At this point in world history, almost every nation has to choose between alternative ways of life. All too often this choice is not free. One way of life is based on the will of the majority and is characterized by free institutions, representative form of government, free elections, guarantees for personal freedom, freedom of speech and religion and freedom from political oppression. The other way of life is based on the will of a minority, which it forcibly imposes on the majority. It is based on terror and repression, on censorship of the press and radio, on rigged elections and on the deprivation of personal freedoms. I believe it must be the policy of the United States to assist free peoples who oppose submission by armed minorities or external pressure. I believe we must help all free peoples so that they can determine their own destiny in their own way. By such assistance, I mean above all economic and financial aid, which forms the basis for economic stability and an orderly political situation. The world is not static and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo by means of coercive methods or tricks such as political infiltration in violation of the Charter of the United Nations . In helping free and independent nations maintain their freedom, the United States is realizing the principles of the United Nations. The free peoples of the world count on our support in their struggle for freedom. If we hesitate in our leadership role, we are endangering world peace - and we are certainly damaging the welfare of our own nation. [...] "
literature
- Heiko Meiertöns: The Doctrines of American Security Policy. Evaluation of international law and its influence on international law. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2006, ISBN 3-8329-1904-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ From: Manfred Görtemaker u. a .: The end of the East-West conflict? , Berlin 1990 (State Center for Political Education), p. 58.