A Grand Strategy of Democratic Solidarity

Abstract

On March 12, 1947, Harry Truman addressed a joint session of Congress with a very specific proposal: emergency aid for Greece and Turkey, which were menaced by a communist insurgency and facing Soviet intimidation, respectively. But Truman, speaking at the dawn of the Cold War, framed the matter far more expansively. Allowing the countries of the world to “work out a way of life free from coercion,” he explained, had been a “fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan.” At a time when “nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life,” the United States must once again “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities by outside pressures.” Some of Truman’s own advisers were uneasy at this sweeping language. Truman himself admitted that the Turkish and Greek governments were, at best, quasi-democracies. Yet he nonetheless presented matters starkly in order to rally Americans to the banner of containment and capture what was ultimately at stake in the Cold War. The fundamental question, Truman understood, was not simply about Greece and Turkey. It was whether the postwar world would be shaped by liberal principles of self-determination and freedom of choice—or would instead be molded by coercion, predation, and authoritarian aggression. Truman would recognize the situation America and its allies confront today. Democracies are again threatened by illiberal influences within their borders