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Anna Samson has had a decade-long career in aid, was a US State Department-funded Fulbright Scholar, and has a PhD in international relations and American foreign policy.In this episode we discuss the inadvertent economic and political outcomes of foreign aid on receiving nations. What surprised me was Anna's view on the scale of the rent-seeking across the aid industry and the transformation of the aid project into one of strategic military and economic interests rather than one of humanitarianism.Apologies for the audio quality.Please read Anna's full article below about foreign aid, its failures, and its creeping national security objectives.As always, please like, share, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for your support. Find Fresh Economic Thinking on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Theme music: Happy Swing by Serge Quadrado Music under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC 4.0The United States has had its fair share of Presidential foreign policy doctrines over the years.The Truman Doctrine underpinned America's Cold War containment policy to stop the spread of communism and Soviet influence.After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Bush Doctrine brought us preventative military strikes and the ‘if you're not with us, you're against us' principle.Just over 50 days into his second term, the Trump Doctrine is shaping up to be ‘you can't make an omelette without blowing up the entire chicken coop'.Nowhere has this approach been more sharply felt than in the dismantling of USAID, a cornerstone of contemporary US foreign policy.Jettisoning USAID has achieved symbolic and practical purposes; it is both exactly what MAGA fans hoped for and what its critics feared: Trump embracing radical honesty in international relations by saying the quiet bits out loud and rupturing the mythology of the self-limiting guardrails on Executive power.Moments after his inauguration, President Trump, bolstered by Elon Musk's analysis of USAID as “not an apple with a worm in it [but] a ball of worms”, froze $60 billion in overseas development aid and then stood down 97% of its staff.Industry veterans highlighted the catastrophe the Executive Orders caused: polio vaccination programs halted, tonnes of food aid left rotting in warehouses in the midst of famines, and a stop on urgent humanitarian assistance delivered to hard-to-reach conflict zones.That's the problem with applying a Silicon Valley move-fast-and-break-things mindset to government policy: you can't just CTRL-Z your way out of any unintended consequences.The recent Supreme Court decision ordering the Trump Administration to immediately unfreeze US$2 billion in existing aid contracts only provides temporary reprieve for those relying on American development assistance. The ruling doesn't apply to billions in planned program funding or USAID jobs that have already been axed, both of which are the subject of separate legal challenges.To the President's detractors, gutting USAID is ideological and myopic. But it's also another example of Trump seeing which way the crowd is moving and running out in front.Indeed, rather than leaping to fill the void left by the US vacating the field, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a 40 per cent cut to his country's aid budget. France and the Netherlands are also cutting their aid expenditure by about a third.While Western aid workers are wringing their hands and UN buildings are lowering their thermostats as a cost-saving measure, the sector bears a great deal of responsibility for its own demise.With little evidence to show aid programs are delivering on their grand promises of economic prosperity and development, spending billions on aid is increasingly justified as a tool to advance donor countries' national security interests.This connection is not new: the modern aid system was built by imperial powers to help maintain influence even as their former colonial territories were achieving political independence.It should come as no surprise that many aid recipients are not exactly mourning USAID's downfall. They point to numerous instances where USAID used humanitarianism as a front for meddling in other nations' domestic politics.For all the talk of ‘empowerment' and ‘local partnerships', government-funded foreign aid is rooted in and continues to reproduce historical structures of resource extraction, dependence, market distortion and racism.Explicitly blurring the lines between humanitarianism and self-interest lays bare the iron fist of neocolonialism within the velvet glove of benevolence.From the perspective of donor countries, all this real-talk about interests over altruism requires the aid industry to demonstrate bang for taxpayer buck.It's no accident that among the first casualties in DOGE's USAID cuts were expat bureaucrats enjoying all the cushy accoutrements that a career in the aid industry guaranteed.Government donor agencies - including Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) — frequently administer aid money inefficiently and ineffectively; 40 per cent of Australian aid investments were rated as 'unsatisfactory' upon completion.If the aim of aid is to bolster our own security, not only should this causal link be established more directly, DFAT should explain why Australia funds aid over other defence spending with a clearer line of sight to maintaining the nation's middle power status.Current approaches to aid program evaluations, including in DFAT's most recent Performance of Australian Development Cooperation Report 2023-24, do not provide that level of accountability. Taxpayers are expected to accept measures like “capacity building” and numbers of individuals “supported” or “reached” in pursuit of development goals.USAID's abolition, while confronting in its audacity, should not be met simply with self-righteous indignation about the supposed nobility of aid work or showing how aid can be weaponised to undercut the West's rivals.Instead, it should be seen as an opportunity to rethink the whole foreign aid system. It's a chance to create a world where countries drive their own development and self-interested ‘generosity' and donor dependence are no longer required.Decoupling foreign aid from national security will allow this money to do what it does best: humanitarian action based on foundational principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fresheconomicthinking.com/subscribe
Thank you for checking in to our podcast on The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. While both the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine were US policies aimed at containing the spread of communism during the Cold War, there are a number of key differences. The main difference is that the Truman Doctrine focused on providing military and political support to countries threatened by communist takeover, while the Marshall Plan offered large-scale economic aid to rebuild war-torn Western Europe after World War II, aiming to prevent communist influence by stabilizing their economies. For all the details, take a listen and know that there is always more to learn! -Jimmy & Jean
We conclude our coverage of the presidency of Harry S. Truman with part three here in this podcast. We are again joined by Mr Mark Adams from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum & Library. Foreign Policy wise, throughout his two terms as President, Truman has one development after another. The start of the Cold War, the rebuilding of Europe – not just borders, rebuilding cities and reviving the economy through programs like the Truman Doctrine and The Marshall Plan and of course The Korean War which we will do a separate episode on. Truman also shocks US officials and world leaders with another shocking decision. What was it? Take a listen and find out! We do not want to put too much into the description, and hope you enjoy the podcast. There is always more to learn, Jimmy & Jean
In this insightful episode of Getting to Better Together, host Richard Borden explores the concept of development, its historical roots, and the challenges of navigating complexity in a globalized world. From the Truman Doctrine's vision of progress to the multifaceted issues of poverty, governance, and environmental change, this conversation dives into the intricacies of international development. Joining Richard is Dr. Ratan Kumar, Assistant Professor at Brac University and Adjunct Faculty at CIDSEL, who shares his anthropological perspectives on media, culture, and society. Tune in to explore how we can better understand and address the complexities of progress and development.
Join Jon and Kurt for a rollicking, delicious, jaunt through the history of donuts and their role in pop culture. Find out why they (ok, just one of them) call donuts "the Truman Doctrine of Pastries", what Clark Gable and Washington Irving had to say about them, and how the hole came to be. Expect to get a big hankering for a donut...
Harry Truman was educated in Missouri public schools, never went to college, and spent a number of his adult years as a dirt farmer. Yet eleven years after first being elected to the Senate he became President of the most powerful nation on earth in the midst of momentous world events. In his new book Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690665/ascent-to-power-by-david-l-roll/), David Roll suggests that from these humble beginnings Truman undertook “the most consequential transition” in American history. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss Truman's unlikely rise and his long string of achievements, from the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift to the enduring Truman Doctrine.
(Bonus) The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledges American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats."[1] The doctrine originated with the primary goal of countering the growth of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947,[2] and further developed on July 4, 1948, when he pledged to oppose the communist rebellions in Greece and Soviet demands from Turkey. More generally, the Truman Doctrine implied American support for other nations threatened by Moscow. It led to the formation of NATO in 1949. Historians often use Truman's speech to Congress on March 12, 1947 to date the start of the Cold War. Truman told Congress that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."[4] Truman contended that because totalitarian regimes coerced free peoples, they automatically represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States. Truman argued that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid, they would inevitably fall out of the United States sphere of influence and into the communist bloc with grave consequences throughout the region. The Truman Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world.[5] It shifted U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union from a wartime alliance to containment of Soviet expansion, as advocated by diplomat George Kennan. It was distinguished from rollback by implicitly tolerating the previous Soviet takeovers in Eastern Europe.
S16-E04 Topics: Marshall Plan for Western Europe, Truman Doctrine to protect democracies, Berlin Airlift to Avoid Russian Blockade. The following links allow you to subscribe: iTunes and Apple Podcast, Amazon Music/Audible, Castbox.fm, Deezer, Facebook, Gaana, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio, Player.fm, Radio Public, Samsung Listen, Stitcher, TuneIn, Twitter, Vurbl, and YouTube. Automatically available through these podcast apps: Castamatic, iCatcher, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSSRadio, and more. Please post comments to the individual episodes, post to the iTunes podcast review and rating section, and email to me, arendale@umn.edu You can also check out my other four podcasts and other social media at www.davidmedia.org
war in ukraine
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In early 1947, Harry Truman announced that the United States would give assistance to countries under threat from authoritarian forces. Later that year, George C. Marshall addressed Harvard University on the urgent need to help European recovery. In the year that followed the Marshall plan was enacted. Please join our panelists as they discuss the legacy of the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine seventy-five years later and the lessons to be learned for U.S. foreign policy today. The Lessons From History Series uses historical analysis as a critical tool for understanding modern foreign policy challenges by hearing from practitioners who played an important role in a consequential historical event or from experts and historians. This series is made possible through the generous support of David M. Rubenstein.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known by its acronym, NATO, was founded in 1949 to contain Soviet expansionism. President Truman told a joint session of Congress: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This was the essence of the Truman Doctrine. Adopted on a bipartisan basis – with Sen. Arthur Vandenberg playing the most significant role on the Republican side – it encapsulated core American values and interests. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of its empire raised a question: Was NATO's mission accomplished? President Trump at one point called the defensive alliance “obsolete.” He later walked back that description – though he was adamant that all members should be pulling the wagon, not riding on it (hard to argue with him on that point). Vladimir Putin, Russia's ruler, has long wanted to divide and, if possible, destroy NATO. But the brutal, imperialist war he's launched against neighboring Ukraine has instead revived NATO – at least, so far. This raises lots of questions. Foreign Podicy host Clifford D. May poses these and additional questions to Frederick Kagan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Fred was one of the architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq – whose significance FDD understood and energetically supported – and he's a former professor of military history at West Point. His books include Lessons for a Long War and End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801 – 1805. Also on hand to both ask and answer questions: Bradley Bowman, a West Point graduate who served for more than 15 years on active duty as a U.S. Army officer, helicopter pilot, staff officer in Afghanistan, assistant professor at West Point, and top defense advisor in the U.S. Senate. He's now Senior Director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known by its acronym, NATO, was founded in 1949 to contain Soviet expansionism. President Truman told a joint session of Congress: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This was the essence of the Truman Doctrine. Adopted on a bipartisan basis – with Sen. Arthur Vandenberg playing the most significant role on the Republican side – it encapsulated core American values and interests. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of its empire raised a question: Was NATO's mission accomplished? President Trump at one point called the defensive alliance “obsolete.” He later walked back that description – though he was adamant that all members should be pulling the wagon, not riding on it (hard to argue with him on that point). Vladimir Putin, Russia's ruler, has long wanted to divide and, if possible, destroy NATO. But the brutal, imperialist war he's launched against neighboring Ukraine has instead revived NATO – at least, so far. This raises lots of questions. Foreign Podicy host Clifford D. May poses these and additional questions to Frederick Kagan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Fred was one of the architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq – whose significance FDD understood and energetically supported – and he's a former professor of military history at West Point. His books include Lessons for a Long War and End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801 – 1805. Also on hand to both ask and answer questions: Bradley Bowman, a West Point graduate who served for more than 15 years on active duty as a U.S. Army officer, helicopter pilot, staff officer in Afghanistan, assistant professor at West Point, and top defense advisor in the U.S. Senate. He's now Senior Director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).
This goes from he end of WW2 to Eisenhower. It covers domestic life post WW2 and foreign policy including Containment and the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and Berlin Airlift. Also detail on the Korean War. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jason-kufs/support
I've been to the place where the world ends. It's in an out of the way spot, far to the north, near a beaver dam and an abandoned air force base that most people have forgotten even existed. A wildlife refuge surrounds this strange little grotto of man-made hillocks that abides there quietly, a vestige of a time that all too unfortunately has not yet passed from our world. Days go by and no human visits. I walked there with my brother and we moved amid the bunkers, squat tomb-like structures built to withstand a nuclear blast unbothered by anyone or anything but a lonely crow flying over the barest whisper of a breeze. If I didn't know better, I could swear I heard someone say something there, something like a prayer. Perhaps that person was me. I grew up about fifteen miles away from this place and for the entirety of my life in my hometown of Caribou, Maine, I knew that the military had nuclear weapons nearby. After all, it was the middle of the Cold War. Loring Air Force Base was even mentioned in the movie ‘Wargames', a film I watched at the local Caribou Theater. In it, a nervous airman answers the call - if the Russians launched an all-out nuclear attack on the United States, Loring would be the first target. Yes, I knew we had bombs. But walking among the bunkers where the nation's first batch of bombs waited in readiness to destroy life on Earth, it brought all that fear and helplessness back to me. It reminded me that I had grown up on the edge of oblivion. We all did. The former site of the North River Depot is in Limestone, Maine. It was built here before the nearby Loring Air Force Base, which itself is now only a memory. The bunkers we walk among are easily viewed on Google Earth but at one time in the early 1950s, this was one of the most secure and secret sites on the planet. Inside this strange and haunting set of structures half buried in the earth, the United States stored enough nuclear warheads to destroy the earth several times over. These are the depositories of doom and they are as quiet as the grave. They stand today as a testament to a period of time in our history when the words ‘the end of the world' were no longer a metaphor. This was the place where the end of the world could easily have begun. In the aftermath of World War II, for a while, the United States was the sole superpower on the planet. Two nuclear fission bombs had been dropped on the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, ending the greatest war this planet and humanity had ever known. The United States had only two bombs at the time and both were used, with the threat that we had many more at our disposal if the need arose to bomb the country of Japan into submission. When the Emperor of Japan signed the documents ending the war, the United States had no nuclear weapons left. The tactic worked. The arsenal was actually empty, but not for long. Armed with the recipe, the building of bombs began in earnest and with the true start of the military industrial complex came the need for a place to store these weapons, a place where no one would even think to look. IF you're going to stockpile something above top secret, you'd better find someplace no one would ever think of looking. In 1947, a new joint service military organization called the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project began its task of assessing the readiness of the nuclear weapons possessed by the U.S. government. When they got to Los Alamos, they discovered that there were, in fact, no new nuclear weapons to assess. Since the end of World War II, not a single nuclear bomb had been constructed. By the time the inspectors left Los Alamos, there was one bomb that t thought capable of detonation. The Special Weapons project set up shop in neighboring Sandia Base in New Mexico in that same year, which was also the year that the Truman Doctrine became US policy - a doctrine that offered to ‘support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.' The Truman Doctrine would usher in a period of political tensions that would result in the Cold War, once the USSR also possessed the power of the atom. The US arsenal grew by jumps and starts and by the end of 1947, there were at least fifty-six functional nuclear bombs ready for deployment with a fleet of thirty-five silver-plated B-29s to deliver them. On August 29, 1949, the USSR detonated its first device. The two forces that helped end the war in Europe were now both in possession of nuclear weapons and they were not on the same team anymore. With the tensions growing, it became clear to the powers that be that what was needed was a place to store these weapons. Caribou, Maine is a small city that calls itself the northeastern most city in the country. It is an agricultural country with long, rolling hills, millions of trees, lakes and rivers, and more deer than humans. That was true in 1947 and it is still true today. There were only a few roads into and out of Aroostook County. In 1950, the entire population of Aroostook County was 96,039. This quiet, nearly forgotten part of the country was chosen as the first site in the history of the world to store a nuclear arsenal. Eventually, four more sites would be chosen, but Caribou Air Force Station, also known as North River Depot and then East Loring, was allegedly the first to be built and manned. When you look at an aerial photo of the North River Depot, it is easy to confuse it with a small housing development, but without houses. Instead, you will see over forty small hillocks, covered with grass, masking something larger underneath. These mounds are concrete bunkers built to withstand a nuclear blast. Inside of these structures were stored the bomb housings that, once the detonators were inserted, would each become a means to an end - each designed for the end of someone's world. Looking closer, you will see a road circling the small facility. There are no fences. Instead of fences, a constant patrol circled the bunkers twenty-four hours a day, always in motion. If someone wanted to infiltrate this place, they would have to get there first and then pass through marsh and forest before encountering armed resistance. There are other structures. There is a huge concrete cube that is designed to look like a building. It is modeled to have false windows, false doors and it might be mistaken for a dormitory or office building. If an enemy viewed the building from above, the idea was that they would not view it as a target because of its drab, nondescript design. In fact, despite its size, it has only a few small chambers inside it which you can peek at if you step onto the landing, though it is still off limits to the public. You can see an open vault door a foot thick, open to the elements. Pictures from the decommissioning show shelving with cubicles. This concrete cube housed the detonators, the highly radioactive elements that, once inserted into the bomb housings, would make the bomb capable of detonation and destruction. It was thought safe to store these away from the housings as a precaution against any accidents that might occur. When required, they could quickly be delivered to the adjacent bunkers and gingerly inserted into the bomb. It is rumored that there were underground tunnels running underneath each of the bunkers and from the cube so that in the event of a heavy winter, nothing could stop the efficiency of the bomb's delivery to the aircraft that would ultimately deliver them to their final destinations. In the end, this cube had to be abandoned because it was so heavy, it was sinking at an angle into the ground. Another facility was built and this one was sealed for decades. In January of 1992 when Loring Air Force Base was being closed, twelve workers cut into the door of the cube of Building A and were contaminated by radiation. The Air Force and Congressional representatives investigated the claims. The Air Force explained to the investigators that the building was unknown to them. They didn't know it existed. Officially, the end cause of the illness of the men who cut into the building was that they suffered a massive dose of radon gas that had accumulated in the thirty years it stood there, sealed against the world. This explanation seems weak given that it was once the single place on planet Earth that housed all the man-made radioactive detonators capable of global devastation. Today, there is no door on the building and the winds whistle through the barred doorway. No radon gas can accumulate. For a few years, this site and four others across the country housed Armageddon. The Russians had their storage facilities, as well. So did other nations as the years passed. The long-range bombers used as delivery systems remained but were largely replaced by newer missile systems to deliver the ultimate payload. In 1988, the Cold War effectively ended and Loring Air Force Base closed. Today, it's a hauntingly silent place, still maintained by the local authorities, with one of the largest arch hangers in the world and one of the longest runways, too. There are a few businesses, a nature preserve, a motel, and a museum on the site, but it is always strangely quiet and one might even venture to say haunted- not with ghosts - but with memories. Ask anyone who served at Loring and you'll hear a fondness for the place in their voice, even though the winters were long and cold and it was situated in the middle of nowhere. You'll hear a fondness for the land, for the people, and for the former mission of the base. Time is having its effect on the buildings that are not maintained and it is only a matter of time before much of it returns to the wild. One day, perhaps thousands of years from now, the concrete bunkers that housed the bombs and the sinking concrete cube that housed the detonators will also crumble, but by that time, who knows what the humans of the distant future will think if they stumble upon these curious ruins and wonder, what was their purpose? Who built them and why? I've been to the place where the world could have ended. That the world still exists over seventy years after it was constructed is a testament to the tenacious nature of Humanity. But how strange it is now to walk among the grassy hillocks and into the cavernous mouths of the bunkers and think of things that might have been. It is a lonely, cold feeling, after all, because those things that might have been? Well, the pity is, they still might be... REFERENCES Garbinski, John C., North River Depot, 2011 Rhodes, Richard, Dark Sun The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, 1995, Touchstone Loring Remembers the Skies for Us, “The History” https://sites.google.com/site/loringremembers/history-of-loring-afb Declassified U.S. Nuclear Test Film #69
In March,1947 Harry Truman delivered to a joint session of Congress one of the most consequential foreign policy speeches ever given by a U.S. President. It was the speech in which Truman announced his plans to deliver aid to two embattled countries --Greece and Turkey-- threatened by instability and, as U.S. officials saw it, Communist subversion. Truman effectively was setting forth a new policy, committing the United States to assisting countries resisting aggression, or perceived threats of aggression, from Soviet Russia. It was dubbed the Truman Doctrine, and along with the Marshall plan, the creation of NATO and the Berlin Airlift, it created a global security architecture that is still very much with us and today 75 years later its shaping how Joe Biden is responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jeffrey Frank, author of a new book The Trials of Harry Truman, joins to talk about how the the plain speaking president from Missouri came to roll out that policy – and the role it played then and continues to play today on this episode of Skullduggery's Buried Treasure.GUESTS:Jeffrey Frank (@JeffreyAFrank), Author of The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of An Ordinary ManHOSTS:Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff), Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo NewsDaniel Klaidman (@dklaidman), Editor in Chief, Yahoo NewsVictoria Bassetti (@VBass), fellow, Brennan Center for Justice (contributing co-host) RESOURCES:You can pick up Frank's book The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of An Ordinary Man - Here. Follow us on Twitter: @SkullduggeryPodListen and subscribe to "Skullduggery" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.Email us with feedback, questions or tips: SkullduggeryPod@yahoo.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
President Harry Truman's address to the United States Congress, and the world, in March 1947 is seen by some historians as marking the start of the Cold War. In it, the President committed the USA to the role of defender of global democracy, and pledged to contain the expansion of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. The Truman Doctrine, as it became known, led to the establishment of NATO and, later, US involvement in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. But, as Bridget Kendall discovers, the speech and the policy it set out were by no means inevitable - both were shaped as much by misunderstandings and exaggerated fears as they were conflicting ideologies and the actions of the former World War Two allies. Producer: Simon Tulett Contributors: Melvyn Leffler, Edward Stettinius Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia, USA; Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, UK; Denise Bostdorff, professor of communication studies at The College of Wooster, in Ohio, USA. Credits: Recording of the The RT Hon Winston Churchill extracts from a speech made at Westminster College Fulton Missouri; Truman's address courtesy of the Harry S Truman Library and Columbia Broadcasting System. (Image: Close-up of President Harry Truman as he delivers a speech to Congress. Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)
In this episode of the Cold War series on containment, we move into the Vietnam War and analyze how the conflict played a pivotal role in portraying the U.S. desire to curtail the growth of communism. Ambassadors Burton Levin and E. Allan Wednt offer their perspectives from being involved in this era and explain the motivations behind carrying out the Truman Doctrine and preventing the toppling effects of the Domino Theory. From administrative efforts on containment policy to outright proxy wars in the cold war against communism, we leave with a better understanding of why the countries involved felt so compelled to act upon their respective, conflicting nationalistic ideologies.
In 1947, the United States created the Truman Docrine prohibiting The Soviet Union from spreading communism after World War II.Just like Congress... to make a law someone else has to follow, but does not apply to them.Did you know their is an official Communist Party of America? One could argue that the current administration is moving in that direction... WELCOME to TRUMAN'S MATRIX!
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The Truman Doctrine, by Harry S. Truman.
Our last episode was on Project MAC, a Cold War-era project sponsored by ARPA. That led to many questions like what led to the Cold War and just what was the Cold War. We'll dig into that today. The Cold War was a period between 1946, in the days after World War II, and 1991, when the United States and western allies were engaged in a technical time of peace that was actually an aggressive time of arms buildup and proxy wars. Technology often moves quickly when nations or empires are at war. In many ways, the Cold War gave us the very thought of interactive computing and networking, so is responsible for the acceleration towards our modern digital lives. And while I've never seen it references as such, this was more of a continuation of wars between the former British empire and the Imperialistic Russian empires. These make up two or the three largest empires the world has ever seen and a rare pair of empires that were active at the same time. And the third, well, we'll get to the Mongols in this story as well. These were larger than the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, or any of the Chinese dynasties. In fact, the British Empire that reached its peak in 1920 was 7 times larger than the land controlled by the Romans, clocking in at 13.7 million square miles. The Russian Empire was 8.8 million square miles. Combined the two held nearly half the world. And their legacies live on in trade empires, in some cases run by the same families that helped fun the previous expansions. But the Russians and British were on a collision course going back to a time when their roots were not as different as one might think. They were both known to the Romans. But yet they both became feudal powers with lineages of rulers going back to Vikings. We know the Romans battled the Celts, but they also knew of a place that Ptolemy called Sarmatia Europea in around 150AD, where a man named Rurik settle far later. He was a Varangian prince, which is the name Romans gave to Vikings from the area we now call Sweden. The 9th to 11th century saw a number o these warrior chiefs flow down rivers throughout the Baltics and modern Russia in search of riches from the dwindling Roman vestiges of empire. Some returned home to Sweden; others conquered and settled. They rowed down the rivers: the Volga, the Volkhov, the Dvina, and the networks of rivers that flow between one another, all the way down the Dnieper river, through the Slavic tripes Ptolemy described which by then had developed into city-states, such as Kiev, past the Romanians and Bulgers and to the second Rome, or Constantinople. The Viking ships rowed down these rivers. They pillaged, conquered, and sometimes settled. The term for rowers was Rus. Some Viking chiefs set up their own city-states in and around the lands. Some when their lands back home were taken while they were off on long campaigns. Charlemagne conquered modern day France and much of Germany, from The Atlantic all the way down into the Italian peninsula, north into Jutland, and east to the border with the Slavic tribes. He weakened many, upsetting the balance of power in the area. Or perhaps there was never a balance of power. Empires such as the Scythians and Sarmatians and various Turkic or Iranian powers had come and gone and each in their wake crossing the vast and harsh lands found only what Homer said of the area all the way back in the 8th century BCE, that the land was deprived of sunshine. The Romans never pushed up so far into the interior of the steppes as the were busy with more fertile farming grounds. But as the Roman Empire fell and the Byzantines flourished, the Vikings traded with them and even took their turn trying to loot Constantinople. And Frankish Paris. And again, settled in the Slavic lands, marrying into cultures and DNA. The Rus Rome retreated from lands as her generals were defeated. The Merovingian dynasty rose in the 5th century with the defeat of Syagrius, the last Roman general Gaul and lasted until a family of advisors slowly took control of running the country, transitioning to the Carolingian Empire, of which Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, as he was crowned, was the most famous. He conquered and grew the empire. Charlemagne knew the empire had outgrown what one person could rule with the technology of the era, so it was split into three, which his son passed to his grandsons. And so the Carolingian empire had made the Eastern Slavs into tributaries of the Franks. There were hostilities but by the Treaty of Mersen in 870 the split of the empire generally looked like the borders of northern Italy, France, and Germany - although Germany also included Austria but not yet Bohemia. It split and re-merged and smaller boundary changes happened but that left the Slavs aware of these larger empires. The Slavic peoples grew and mixed with people from the Steppes and Vikings. The Viking chiefs were always looking for new extensions to their trade networks. Trade was good. Looting was good. Looting and getting trade concessions to stop looting those already looted was better. The networks grew. One of those Vikings was Rurik. Possibly Danish Rorik, a well documented ally who tended to play all sides of the Carolingians and a well respected raider and military mind. Rurik was brought in as the first Viking, or rower, or Rus, ruler of the important trade city that would be known as New City, or Novgorod. Humans had settled in Kiev since the Stone Age and then by Polans before another prince Kyi took over and then Rurik's successor Oleg took Smolensk and Lyubech. Oleg extended the land of Rus down the trading routes, and conquered Kiev. Now, they had a larger capital and were the Kievan Rus. Rurik's son Igor took over after Oleg and centralized power in Kiev. He took tribute from Constantinople after he attacked, plunder Arab lands off the Caspian Sea, and was killed overtaxing vassal states in his territory. His son Sviatoslav the Brave then conquered the Alans and through other raiding helped cause the collapse of the Kazaria and Bulgarian empires. They expanded throughout the Volga River valley, then to the Balkans, and up the Pontic Steppe, and quickly became the largest empire in Europe of the day. His son Vladimir the Great expanded again, with he empire extending from the Baltics to Belarus to the Baltics and converted to Christianity, thus Christianizing the lands he ruled. He began marrying and integrating into the Christian monarchies, which his son continued. Yaroslov the Wise married the daughter of the King of Sweden who gave him the area around modern-day Leningrad. He then captured Estonia in 1030, and as with others in the Rurikid dynasty as they were now known, made treaties with others and then pillaged more Byzantine treasures. He married one daughter to the King of Norway, another to the King of Hungary, another to the King of the Franks, and another to Edward the Exile of England, and thus was the grandfather of Edgar the Aetheling, who later became a king of England. The Mongols The next couple of centuries saw the rise of Feudalism and the descendants of Rurik fight amongst each other. The various principalities were, as with much of Europe during the Middle Ages, semi-independent duchies, similar to city-states. Kiev became one of the many and around the mid 1100s Yaroslav the Wise's great-grandson, Yuri Dolgoruki built a number of new villages and principalities, including one along the Moskva river they called Moscow. They built a keep there, which the Rus called kremlins. The walls of those keeps didn't keep the Mongols out. They arrived in 1237. They moved the capital to Moscow and Yaroslav II, Yuri's grandson, was poisoned in the court of Ghengis Khan's grandson Batu. The Mongols ruled, sometimes through the descendants of Rurik, sometimes disposing of them and picking a new one, for 200 years. This is known as the time of the “Mongol yoke.” One of those princes the Mongols let rule was Ivan I of Moscow, who helped them put down a revolt in a rival area in the 1300s. The Mongols trusted Moscow after that, and so we see a migration of rulers of the land up into Moscow. The Golden Horde, like the Viking Danes and Swedes settled in some lands. Kublai Khan made himself ruler of China. Khanates splintered off to form the ruling factions of weaker lands, such as modern India and Iran - who were once the cradle of civilization. Those became the Mughals dynasties as they Muslimized and moved south. And so the Golden Horde became the Great Horde. Ivan the Great expanded the Muscovite sphere of influence, taking Novgorod, Rostov, Tver, Vyatka, and up into the land of the Finns. They were finally strong enough to stand up to the Tatars as they called their Mongol overlords and made a Great Stand on the Ugra River. And summoning a great army simply frightened the Mongol Tatars off. Turns out they were going through their own power struggles between princes of their realm and Akhmed was assassinated the next year, with his successor becoming Sheikh instead of Khan. Ivan's grandson, Ivan the Terrible expanded the country even further. He made deals with various Khans and then conquered others, pushing east to conquer the Khanate of Sibiu and so conquered Siberia in the 1580s. The empire then stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He had a son who didn't have any heirs and so was the last in the Rurikid dynasty. But Ivan the Terrible had married Anastasia Romanov, who when he crowned himself Caesar, or Tsar as they called it, made her Tsaritsa. And so the Romanov's came to power in 1596 and following the rule of Peter the Great from 1672 to 1725, brought the Enlightenment to Russia. He started the process of industrialization, built a new capital he called St Petersburg, built a navy, made peace with the Polish king, then Ottoman king, and so took control of the Baltics, where the Swedes had taken control of on and off since the time of Rurik. Russian Empire Thus began the expansion as the Russian Empire. They used an alliance with Denmark-Norway and chased the Swedes through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, unseating the Polish king along the way. He probably should not have allied with them. They moved back into Finland, took the Baltics so modern Latvia and Estonia, and pushed all the way across the Eurasian content across the frozen tundra and into Alaska. Catherine the Great took power in 1762 and ignited a golden age. She took Belarus, parts of Mongolia, parts of modern day Georgia, overtook the Crimean Khanate, and modern day Azerbaijan. and during her reign founded Odessa, Sevastopol and other cities. She modernized the country like Peter and oversaw nearly constant rebellions in the empire. And her three or four children went on to fill the courts of Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands. She set up a national network of schools, with teachings from Russian and western philosophers like John Locke. She collected vast amounts of art, including many from China. She set up a banking system and issued paper money. She also started the process to bring about the end of serfdom. Even though between her and the country she owned 3.3 million herself. She planned on invading the Khanate of Persia, but passed away before her army got there. Her son Paul halted expansion. And probably just in time. Her grandson Alexander I supported other imperial powers against Napoleon and so had to deal with the biggest invasion Russia had seen. Napoleon moved in with his grand army of half a million troops. The Russians used a tactic that Peter the Great used and mostly refused to engage Napoleon's troops instead burning the supply lines. Napoleon lost 300,000 troops during that campaign. Soon after the Napoleanic wars ended, the railways began to appear. The country was industrializing and with guns and cannons, growing stronger than ever. The Opium Wars, between China and the UK then the UK and France were not good to China. Even though Russia didn't really help they needed up with a piece of the Chinese empire and so in the last half of the 1800s the Russian Empire grew by another 300,000 square miles on the backs of a series of unequal treaties as they came to be known in China following World War I. And so by 1895, the Romanovs had expanded past their native Moscow, driven back the Mongols, followed some of the former Mongol Khanates to their lands and taken them, took Siberia, parts of the Chinese empire, the Baltics, Alaska, and were sitting on the third largest empire the world had ever seen, which covered nearly 17 percent of the world. Some 8.8 million square miles. And yet, still just a little smaller than the British empire. They had small skirmishes with the British but by and large looked to smaller foes or proxy wars, with the exception of the Crimean War. Revolution The population was expanding and industrializing. Workers flocked to factories on those train lines. And more people in more concentrated urban areas meant more ideas. Rurik came in 862 and his descendants ruled until the Romanovs took power in 1613. They ruled until 1917. That's over 1,000 years of kings, queens, Tsars, and Emperors. The ideas of Marx slowly spread. While the ruling family was busy with treaties and wars and empire, they forgot to pay attention to the wars at home. People like Vladimir Lenin discovered books by people like Karl Marx. Revolution was in the air around the world. France had shown monarchies could be toppled. Some of the revolutionaries were killed, others put to work in labor camps, others exiled, and still others continued on. Still, the empire was caught up in global empire intrigues. The German empire had been growing and the Russians had the Ottomans and Bulgarians on their southern boarders. They allied with France to take Germany, just as they'd allied with Germany to take down Poland. And so after over 1.8 million dead Russians and another 3.2 million wounded or captured and food shortages back home and in the trenches, the people finally had enough of their Tsar. They went on strike but Tsar Nicholas ordered the troops to fire. The troops refused. The Duma stepped in and forced Nicholas to abdicate. Russia had revolted in 1917, sued Germany for peace, and gave up more territory than they wanted in the process. Finland, the Baltics, their share of Poland, parts of the Ukraine. It was too much. But the Germans took a lot of time and focus to occupy and so it helped to weaken them in the overall war effort. Back home, Lenin took a train home and his Bolshevik party took control of the country. After the war Poland was again independent. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Serbs became independent nations. In the wake of the war the Ottoman Empire was toppled and modern Turkey was born. The German Kaiser abdicated. And socialism and communism were on the rise. In some cases, that was really just a new way to refer to a dictator that pretended to care about the people. Revolution had come to China in 1911 and Mao took power in the 1940s. Meanwhile, Lenin passed in 1924 and Rykov, then Molotov, who helped spur a new wave of industrialization. Then Stalin, who led purges of the Russian people in a number of Show Trials before getting the Soviet Union, as Russian Empire was now called, into World War II. Stalin encouraged Hitler to attack Poland in 1939. Let's sit on that for a second. He tried to build a pact with the Western powers and after that broke down, he launched excursions annexing parts of Poland, Finland, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. Many of the lands were parts of the former Russian Empire. The USSR had chunks of Belarus and the Ukraine before but as of the 1950s annexed Poland, Easter Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria as part of the Warsaw Pact, a block of nations we later called the Soviet Bloc. They even built a wall between East and West Germany. During and after the war, the Americans whisked German scientists off to the United States. The Soviets were in no real danger from an invasion by the US and the weakened French, Austrians, and military-less Germans were in no place to attack the Soviets. The UK had to rebuild and British empire quickly fell apart. Even the traditional homes of the vikings who'd rowed down the rivers would cease to become global powers. And thus there were two superpowers remaining in the world, the Soviets and the United States. The Cold War The Soviets took back much of the former Russian Empire, claiming they needed buffer zones or through subterfuge. At its peak, the Soviet Union cover 8.6 million square miles; just a couple hundred thousand shy of the Russian Empire. On the way there, they grew to a nation of over 290 million people with dozens of nationalities. And they expanded the sphere of influence even further, waging proxy wars in places like Vietnam and Korea. They never actually went to war with the United States, in much the same way they mostly avoided the direct big war with the Mongols and the British - and how Rorik of Dorestad played both sides of Frankish conflicts. We now call this period the Cold War. The Cold War was an arms race. This manifested itself first in nuclear weapons. The US is still the only country to detonate a nuclear weapon in war time, from the bombings that caused the surrender of Japan at the end of the war. The Soviets weren't that far behind and detonated a bomb in 1949. That was the same year NATO was founded as a treaty organization between Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. The US upped the ante with the hydrogen bomb in 1952. The Soviets got the hydrogen bomb in 1955. And then came the Space Race. Sputnik launched in 1957. The Russians were winning the space race. They further proved that when they put Yuri Gagarin up in 1961. By 1969 the US put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Each side developed military coalitions, provided economic aid to allies, built large arsenals of weapons, practiced espionage against one another, deployed massive amounts of propaganda, and spreading their ideology. Or at least that's what the modern interpretation of history tells us. There were certainly ideological differences, but the Cold War saw the spread of communism as a replacement for conquest. That started with Lenin trying to lead a revolt throughout Europe but shifted over the decades into again, pure conquest. Truman saw the rapid expansion of the Soviets and without context that they were mostly reclaiming lands conquered by the Russian imperial forces, won support for the Truman Doctrine. There, he contained Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe. First, they supported Greece and Turkey. But the support extended throughout areas adjacent to Soviet interests. Eisenhower saw how swiftly Russians were putting science in action with satellites and space missions and nuclear weapons - and responded with an emphasis in American science. The post-war advancements in computing were vast in the US. The industry moved from tubes and punch cards to interactive computing after the Whirlwind computer was developed at MIT first to help train pilots and then to intercept soviet nuclear weapons. Packet switching, and so the foundations of the Internet were laid to build a computer network that could withstand nuclear attack. Graphical interfaces got their start when Ivan Sutherland was working at MIT on the grandchild of Whirlwind, the TX-2 - which would evolve into the Digital Equipment PDP once privatized. Drum memory, which became the foundation of storage was developed to help break Russian codes and intercept messages. There isn't a part of the computing industry that isn't touched by the research farmed out by various branches of the military and by ARPA. Before the Cold War, Russia and then the Soviet Union were about half for and half against various countries when it came to proxy wars. They tended to play both sides. After the Cold War it was pretty much always the US or UK vs the Soviet Union. Algeria, Kenya, Taiwan, the Sudan, Lebanon, Central America, the Congo, Eritrea, Yemen, Dhofar, Algeria, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, Chad, Iran, Iraq, Thailand, Bolivia, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Angolia, Ethiopia, the Sahara, Indonesia, Somalia, Mozambique, Libya, and Sri Lanka. And the big ones were Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Many of these are still raging on today. The Soviet empire grew to over 5 million soldiers. The US started with 2 nuclear weapons in 1945 and had nearly 300 by 1950 when the Soviets had just 5. The US stockpile grew to over 18,000 in 1960 and peaked at over 31,000 in 1965. The Soviets had 6,129 by then but kept building until they got close to 40,000 by 1980. By then the Chinese, France, and the UK each had over 200 and India and Israel had developed nuclear weapons. Since then only Pakistan and North Korea have added warheads, although there are US warheads located in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Modern Russia The buildup was expensive. Research, development, feeding troops, supporting asymmetrical warfare in proxy states, and trade sanctions put a strain on the government and nearly bankrupted Russia. They fell behind in science, after Stalin had been anti-computers. Meanwhile, the US was able to parlay all that research spending into true productivity gains. The venture capital system also fueled increasingly wealthy companies who paid taxes. Banking, supply chains, refrigeration, miniaturization, radio, television, and everywhere else we could think of. By the 1980s, the US had Apple and Microsoft and Commodore. The Russians were trading blat, or an informal black market currency, to gain access to knock-offs of ZX Spectrums when the graphical interfaces systems were born. The system of government in the Soviet Union had become outdated. There were some who had thought to modernize it into more of a technocracy in an era when the US was just starting to build ARPANET - but those ideas never came to fruition. Instead it became almost feudalistic with high-ranking party members replacing the boyars, or aristocrats of the old Kievan Rus days. The standard of living suffered. So many cultures and tribes under one roof, but only the Slavs had much say. As the empire over-extended there were food shortages. If there are independent companies then the finger can be pointed in their direction but when food is rationed by the Politburo then the decline in agricultural production became dependent on bringing food in from the outside. That meant paying for it. Pair that with uneven distribution and overspending on the military. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine had been a one party state. The Communist Party. Michael Gorbachev allowed countries in the Bloc to move into a democratic direction with multiple parties. The Soviet Union simply became unmanageable. And while Gorbachev took the blame for much of the downfall of the empire, there was already a deep decay - they were an oligarchy pretending to be a communist state. The countries outside of Russia quickly voted in non-communist governments and by 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and the Eastern European countries began to seek independence, most moving towards democratic governments. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in 15 separate countries and left the United States standing alone as the global superpower. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999. 2004 saw Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia join. 2009 brought in Albania and Croatia. 2017 led to Montenegro and then North Macedonia. Then came the subject of adding Ukraine. The country that the Kievan Rus had migrated throughout the lands from. The stem from which the name and possibly soul of the country had sprouted from. How could Vladimir Putin allow that to happen? Why would it come up? As the Soviets pulled out of the Bloc countries , they left remnants of their empire behind. Belarus, Kazakstan, and the Ukraine were left plenty of weapons that couldn't be moved quickly. Ukraine alone had 1,700 nuclear weapons, which included 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Add to that nearly 2,000 biological and chemical weapons. Those went to Russia or were disassembled once the Ukrainians were assured of their sovereignty. The Crimea, which had been fought over in multiple bloody wars was added to Ukraine. At least until 2014, when Putin wanted the port of Sevastopol, founded by Catherine the Great. Now there was a gateway from Russia to the Mediterranean yet again. So Kievan Rus under Rurik is really the modern Ukraine and the Russian Empire then Romanov Dynasty flowed from that following the Mongol invasions. The Russian Empire freed other nations from the yolk of Mongolian rule but became something entirely different once they over-extended. Those countries in the empire often traded the Mongol yolk for the Soviet yolk. And entirely different from the Soviet Union that fought the Cold War and the modern Russia we know today. Meanwhile, the states of Europe had been profoundly changed since the days of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man and Marx. Many moved left of center and became socialized parts of their economy. No one ever need go hungry in a Scandanavian country. Health care, education, even child care became free in many countries. Many of those same ideals that helped lift the standard of living for all in developed countries then spread, including in Canada and some in the US. And so we see socialism to capitalism as more of a spectrum than a boolean choice now. And totalitarianism, oligarchy, and democracy as a spectrum as well. Many could argue reforms in democratic countries are paid for by lobbyists who are paid for by companies and thus an effective oligarchy. Others might argue the elections in many countries are rigged and so they aren't even oligarchs, they're monarchies. Putin took office in 1999 and while Dmitry Medvedev was the president for a time, but he effectively ruled in a tandemocracy with Putin until Putin decided to get back in power. That's 23 years and counting and just a few months behind when King Abdullah took over in Jordan and King Mohammed VI took over in Morocco. And so while democratic in name, they're not all quite so democratic. Yet they do benefit from technology that began in Western countries and spread throughout the world. Countries like semi-conductor manufacturer Sitronics even went public on the London stock exchange. Hard line communists might (and do) counter that the US has an empire and that western countries conspire for the downfall of Russia or want to turn Russians into slaves to the capitalist machine. As mentioned earlier, there has always been plenty of propaganda in this relationship. Or gaslighting. Or fake news. Or disinformation. One of those American advancements that ties the Russians to the capitalist yoke is interactive computing. That could have been developed in Glushkov's or Kitov's labs in Russia, as they had the ideas and talent. But because the oligarchy that formed around communism, the ideas were sidelined and it came out of MIT - and that led to Project MAC, which did as much to democratize computing as Gorbachev did to democratize the Russian Federation.
We present an encore Power of Words. WAMC’s Alan Chartock and Historian Dr. Richard Pfau discuss President Harry Truman’s Truman Doctrine speech. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Archive.
The Cold War began as Europe was recovering from economic devastation. In response, the United States sent economic aid to various countries in order to strengthen its influence and their individual defense against the Soviet Union. Because of this, the Soviet Union would counter. In this episode, we cover Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, and President Harry Truman's “Truman Doctrine” and its call for the Marshall Plan in countries like Greece, Turkey, and Germany, all from the perspective of America's Foreign Service Officers.
To call the situation in Afghanistan “complex” is an understatement, so much so that I had to split this topic up into two episodes. In Part 1, we cover the history of Afghanistan, the Truman Doctrine, the Cold War, and the beginnings of the modern Afghan government. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/global-thread/support
Join Jon and Kurt for a rollicking, delicious, jaunt through the history of donuts and their role in pop culture. Find out why they (ok, just one of them) call donuts "the Truman Doctrine of Pastries", what Clark Gable and Washington Irving had to say about them, and how the hole came to be. Expect to get a big hankering for a donut...
ROBERT SPENCER, Director, Jihad Watch, Weekly columnist, PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine, Author, "Mass Migration in Europe: A Model for the U.S.?," and forthcoming, "Islamophobia and the Threat to Free Speech," @jihadwatchRS Robert Spencer: "Sharia is an all-encompassing program for every aspect of human behavior" - Sharia States always have an aggressive posture towards those around them Spencer: To say that there is a benign form of Sharia just flies in the face of our historical experiences - All Sharia states look the same MICHELE GURFINKIEL, former Editor-At-Large, Valerus Actuelles, Fellow, Middle East Forum, Founder and President, Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute Michel Gurfinkiel explains who was ruling Afghanistan pre-U.S. intervention and who will rule after? Lessons for Afghanistan: What would have happened if the Truman administration had not applied the Truman Doctrine across Europe after World War II? What impact will the degradation of traditional French values have on the way of life in France? CAPT. JAMES FANELL, retired Intelligence Officer for the Indo-Pacific, US Navy, former National Security Affairs Fellow, Hoover Institute Capt. James Fanell: One of the most surprising outcomes of the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is that not a single high ranking Biden Administration official has resigned, or been asked to resign Capt. Fanell finds that U.S. inaction in Afghanistan is sending shockwaves around the world Capt. Fanell: Since the election, the Biden Administration is facing an ever-widening credibility gap, which is only widening
On May 12th, 1949 the USSR ended a year long blockade into western Berlin. Discussion of The Cold War, the Truman Doctrine and the policy of containment are all addressed in today's episode.
Michael is joined by Andrea Benvenuti, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, University of NSW, to look into the 60th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and more broadly the Cold War… the period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States. Covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government, the failed landing operation on the south-western coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution led to major shifts in international relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union. It took place at the height of the Cold War, generally considered to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947) to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union (26 December 1991), which was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by the two powers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Exploring what fun historical event took place on this day
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In a program that won broad support, America committed to providing $400 million in assistance to Greece and ...
It’s a special President’s Day release of the Doomsday Clock podcast! We normally publish new episodes every Tuesday, but this one, released on Monday, February 15th is your President’s Day gift from us. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough joins us to talk about Harry Truman, the Truman Doctrine, and the legacy of our 33rd president.
How is Greece influenced by the United States? Comedian and Greek superstar Gus Constantellis (@constantlygus) joins the podcast to share his anecdotes about growing up Greek in NYC - we discuss the Truman Doctrine, and some great Greek food recommendations.
Host Randy Tobler speaks with Joe Scarborough on the Truman Doctrine and why won't it work in modern times. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
After World War II, what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine pulled the U.S. out of its previously isolationist stance and into global relationships that endure today. Learn more about it in this episode of BrainStuff. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers
Joe Scarborough joins The Post to discuss his new book, “Saving Freedom,” which explores the Truman Doctrine, and how it transformed the U.S. and its role in the world.
On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman delivered an address before Congress announcing a policy of Soviet containment that would later be known as the Truman Doctrine. This was just the beginning of a global movement against communist attempts at power that changed U.S. foreign procedure and policy. In his new book, Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization, Scarborough documents the hard work of the U.S. government in containing the spread of communism around the world. The historical account focuses a particular spotlight on President Truman and his ability to rally Republicans and Democrats behind one of America's most dramatic foreign policy shifts. Join us as Scarborough tells the story of a president's ability to protect democracy not only in the United States, but around the world. Joe Scarborough is the co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. He is a former Republican congressman from Florida and also writes for The Washington Post. Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I talk with Joe Scarborough, host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, about our mutual affection for the politician dismissed as the “strange little man” from Missouri, why Harry Truman couldn’t even get respect from his own wife and mother-in-law, and how historians have gradually rehabilitated the legacy of our 33rd President. Joe tells the story of the twin crises that kicked off the Cold War and the speech redefined US foreign policy. We discuss how Truman pulled America out of its isolationist past, the Republican Senator who helped him do it, and how they forged a bipartisan coalition that held for more than 70 years and eventually defeated communism. He discusses Donald Trump’s efforts to reject the Truman Doctrine and undermine longstanding alliances such as NATO, the degree to which President-elect Biden can undo Trump’s disastrous foreign policy, and whether Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, thinks that he will ever return the GOP. Order Joe Scarborough's book Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization on Amazon, Audible, or wherever books are sold. Watch him on Morning Joe weekday mornings from 6-9 eastern on MSNBC, and follow him on twitter at @JoeNBC. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We present an encore Power of Words, WAMC’s Alan Chartock and Historian Dr. Richard Pfau discuss President Harry Truman’s Truman Doctrine speech. In addition, listeners will hear the speech as it was delivered on March 12th, 1947.
We present an encore Power of Words, WAMC’s Alan Chartock and Historian Dr. Richard Pfau discuss President Harry Truman’s Truman Doctrine speech. In addition, listeners will hear the speech as it was delivered on March 12th, 1947.
A huge thanks to Joseph McDade for his generous permission to use his music: https://josephmcdade.com/ Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/ Discord Discussion Board: https://disboard.org/server/474580298630430751 Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Attitudes-War-Peace-Revolution/dp/1587432315/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=war+peace+and+revolution+yoder&qid=1584391613&sr=8-2 -----George Cannon, predecessor of the Truman Doctrine, in a memo (1948): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_by_George_Kennan"Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." Scene On Radio's episode on the American Empire: http://www.sceneonradio.org/s4-e9-american-empire/ Bible Project Revelation 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvVVcYD-0w A book looking at all of the major American wars: https://amishcountrygoods.com/product/christianity-war-and-americas-salvation-story/ America Invades: The Controversial Story of How We've Invaded or Been Militarily Involved with Almost Every Country on Earth: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R1ZXKMW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o06?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Behind the Bastards Podcast on Soleimani (explicit language): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000461883289 War is a Racket: https://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated-ebook/dp/B00E25IYES/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=war+is+a+racket&qid=1592924412&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 Only 3 Countries in which the U.S. hasn't had boots on the ground, and only 2 with which we've had no military dealings whatsoever: https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/these-are-the-only-3-countries-america-hasnt-invaded America's assassination in the Congo: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination Tuskegee Experiment: https://www.history.com/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study Forced Eugenics of Minorities: https://today.duke.edu/2020/07/new-paper-examines-disproportionate-effect-eugenics-nc%E2%80%99s-black-population Jesse Washington: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiyQFG6uHgg Torture and Burning of Henry Smith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Smith_(lynching_victim) Dan Carlin on torture: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-61-blitz-painfotainment/ Mcnamara's Folly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2VwFDV4-g&t=1s Philippine Genocide: https://britsinthephilippines.top/philippines-genocide-3-million-filipinos-killed/ Children in the Civil Right's Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCxE6i_SzoQ Ota Benga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKgDugiQh4 Zinned Project on obscured history: https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/ Chomsky on Haiti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVVRoWxFB1s&t=2698s Chomsky on U.S. Imperialism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PdJ9TAdTdA&t=1028s Trail of Tears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SosZ2ZRJymU Buck vs. Bell Forced Sterilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZQkCSuXZ0U America Invades: How We've Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/1940598427/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Vi9-EbD56NCZM Forced Sterilization Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3_c9pZ4SKc Forced Sterilization of Immigrants in 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/ice-detainees-hysterectomies-medical-neglect-irwin-georgia The Civil War as a Theological Crisis [An interesting read by Evangelical Protestant Mark Noll. He writes many history accounts you can read, but this one in particular helped me to understand how we developed to the point we are now and how some of our idols have been fashioned and maintained.]: https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Crisis-Steven-Janice-Lectures-ebook/dp/B00W1W601S/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=mark+noll&qid=1586187452&sr=8-3 Cornel West's "Democracy Matters:" https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Matters-Winning-Against-Imperialism/dp/B0009JON0U/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Cornell+west+democracy+matters&qid=1587258766&sr=8-1 Nonviolent Action (Sider): https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Action-Christian-Demands-Christians/dp/1587433664/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=nonviolent+action&qid=1579740600&sr=8-1 From Cornel West: "The ugly events of 9/11 should have been an opportunity for nationalself-scrutiny. In the wake of the shock and horror of those attacks, manyasked the question, why do they hate us? But the country failed to engagein a serious, sustained, deeply probing examination of the possibleanswers to that question. Instead, the leaders of the Bush administrationencouraged us to adopt the simplistic and aggressive “with us or againstus” stance and we ran roughshod over our allies, turning a deaf ear to anycriticisms of the course of action the Bush leadership had determined totake. We have been unwilling—both at this critical juncture andthroughout our history—to turn a sufficiently critical eye on our ownbehavior in the world. We have often behaved in an overbearing, imperial,hypocritical manner as we have attained more and more power as ahegemon.Our hypocritical, bullying behavior in regard to so many of the regionsof the world is surely not the only reason for the 9/11 attacks—and itcertainly doesn't justify those horribly callous, violent terrorist acts—butwe have failed to even consider deeply as a culture the role our imperialistbehavior has played in the contempt we have inspired in so much of theworld." ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
The cold war, Russia, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Mikhail Gorbachev
To balance out the comedy and sarcasm of episode 111 we decided to discuss some topics with which we have more experience, dare I say expertise? We cover nutrition, inflammation, stress, some training ideas, fear, risk and the decision-making around it ...and then the rabbit hole of the Truman Doctrine opened ... but this is NOT advice.
President Trump speaks to the nation on the virus......The NBA stops playing.....Italy closed......FDR fireside chats 1933....The Truman Doctrine 1947........Happy # 73 Mitt Romney........other stories....................... Please check our blog or follow me on Twitter. See Carlos Guedes' schedule!
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Liz looks at the Truman Doctrine & the Marshall Plan for your GCSE History exam. In this episode, she will look at how the USA sought to hold back communism through military and economic assistance. She goes through President Harry Truman's speech, as well as the economic assistance laid out in the Marshall Plan. Ideal for preparing your for GCSE History exam. Suitable for AQA, Edexcel, OCR and CIE exam boards. Ideal for preparing you for your GCSE History exam. Click here for the full course, or visit this link: http://bit.ly/2v73km3
In this episode, we discuss the administration of Harry S. Truman, the decision to drop the atomic bomb, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, HUAC hearings, firing an icon, and the election of 1948. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Tensions between the US & USSR had been building even during their awkward wartime alliance, but it was in 1947 that the Cold War became a staple feature of the post-WWII American political & diplomatic scene. This episode indulges in a very brief & oversimplified history of the Soviet Union, and then explores what caused the souring of US-Soviet relations and describes the governmental maneuvers that followed (including the founding of the CIA & NSC, passage of the Truman Doctrine's anti-Communist military aid, & the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe). This week's program also discusses the international attempts to stabilize the postwar world via the founding of the United Nations, IMF, & World Bank, plus the US imposition of democracy upon the former Japanese Empire. Domestically, Truman actually goes to bat for Big Labor against the new GOP Congress, but to no avail; Jackie Robinson's stardom shatters the color barrier in professional sports; and pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in a high-tech aircraft (by 1940s standards). We conclude by exploring the moral paradoxes of America's new role of anti-Communist superpower, and the effect of the Cold War on future US political discourse & electoral outcomes.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/boomertomillennial/posts)
In 1947 US President Harry Truman was forced to commit to the defence of Greece and Turkey against the possibility of communist victories in the Greek civil war and the threat of Soviet pressure on Turkey. The British had been forced to end their commitments to both countries, placing the eastern Mediterranean in danger and as a result the flow of Middle Eastern oil to Europe and America. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Liz looks at the Truman Doctrine & the Marshall Plan for your GCSE History exam. In this episode, she will look at how the USA sought to hold back communism through military and economic assistance. Ideal for preparing your for GCSE History exam. For more info visit https://www.senecalearning.com/blog/gcse-history-revision-guide/ for your GCSE History exam.
Liz looks at the Truman Doctrine & the Marshall Plan for your GCSE History exam. In this episode, she will look at how the USA sought to hold back communism through military and economic assistance. Ideal for preparing your for GCSE History exam. For more info visit https://www.senecalearning.com/blog/gcse-history-revision-guide/ for your GCSE History exam.
How did the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan shape rebuilding efforts in Europe after WWII? Who were the two opposing sides of the Cold War and what early areas of conflict?
We will look at Speaker Pelosi's impeachment statement.....Will the Democrats stand with the Speaker?............Tucker Carlson vs the left mob......Truman Doctrine 1947.......Happy # 72 Mitt Romney.........and other stories..... Please check our blog or follow me on Twitter....... Check Carlos Guedes' schedule this week in Dallas........
An encore Power of Words — WAMC’s Alan Chartock and Historian Dr. Richard Pfau discuss President Harry Truman’s Truman Doctrine speech. In addition, listeners will have an opportunity to actually hear the speech as it was delivered on March 12th, 1947.
* The X Article.* George Kennan, the Soviet expert who wrote the Long Telegram, wrote another piece, but this time published publicly and anonymously, in July 1947, just after Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” speech.* The actual title of the article was “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”.* It was published in Foreign Affairs magazine.* He used the […]
* And so on March 12, 1947, before a joint session of Congress, President Truman articulated, for the first time, a comprehensive American foreign policy for the postwar world. * He did not mention the Soviet Union by name, or refer to the need to contain its power in Europe, though he did place American […]
When President of the United States of America Harry S. Truman addresses Congress in March of 1947, he focused on the need to protect Greece and Turkey from Communist influence. Greece was facing an internal insurrection from a Communist Party, while Turkey was facing more obvious threats from the Soviet Union over access to the Bosphorous and the Dardanelles. What Truman really wanted was to avoid having the spreading Soviet sphere of influence include Greece and Turkey. In asking Congress to provide financial aid in this approach, Truman laid out what would be known as the "Truman Doctrine." The Truman Doctrine said that America would seek to help any nation from becoming a Communist-ruled country. This would then influence American foreign policy for the rest of the Cold War.
Episode 1: America Dawns, looks at the situation which greeted US policymakers between 1945-50. As an episode it serves as a good roundup of all we've learned in the Cold War Crash Course, but a simple summary episode THIS IS NOT!We delve into the mindset behind the Truman Doctrine, ask what the goals of NATO were and investigate how Washington viewed Soviet moves by examining their additional policies and proclamations.We also look at the problems which faced the US in the late 1940s, including the mindset which insisted that there was no money in the kitty to fight the Soviets, and that Washington would have to cut its cloth to suit its pocket. This attitude towards defence expenditure and confrontation with the forces of communism would change in time, but not yet. The three losses - of China, of its status as the sole nuclear power, and of Mao Zedong himself to the Soviet Union, after the Treaty of Friendship was signed in February 1950 - all influenced American policymakers to consider a radical change in policy, and they settled upon a blandly named report called NSC68.What was meant by Chinese Titoism? And what had American policymakers hoped to achieve by cosying up to the Chinese communists? Could they really expect to change the perspective of the Chinese, when the Soviets loomed so large in Mao's estimation? Make sure you join us to find out the answer to this question as well as a host of others. Our first episode, at long last. I hope you enjoy it.Remember history friends, you too can support the podcast and join our lovely community in the process!Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/WhenDiplomacyFailsPodcast/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1856652614380207/Twitter: https://twitter.com/wdfpodcastPatreon: www.patreon.com/WhenDiplomacyFailsWebsite: www.wdfpodcast.comBibliography: www.wdfpodcast.com/source-materials/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In the second episode of the CWCC, we look at how the US managed to tie Western Europe closer to its orbit through political strategy, closer cooperation and sheer economic investment. The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan and NATO were critical building blocks in the Euro-American relationship in the late 1940s, and we get to grips with them here.As the US worked with its beleaguered allies, the chronic lack of food as much as coal threatened disaster. With the dollar above all being the top currency of the shattered continent, a shortage of these same dollars represented disaster to many European states. The initial solution, so it seemed, was favourable loans. Eventually, the solution, stark as it was, was the provision of American sponsored grants. The provision of billions of dollars of aid to get the West back on track, so that it could stand up to communism and hold its own.All the while, Moscow schemed, and the critical question of what to do with Germany loomed large. Neither question would be answered quickly, or without the expenditure of a great deal of effort, money and other resources. Although they were on the right track, there was much to be concerned about in this post-war world, and several challenges still lay on the horizon. The dangers of a communist takeover, or of the big freeze that the winter of 1947-48 presented, threatened ruin for Western civilisation, and one man in particular George C Marshall (pictured), believed that strategic charity, not a tough business sense, should take centre stage. Marshall Aid was en route, but would it get there in time?Remember history friends, you too can support the podcast and join our lovely community in the process!Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/WhenDiplomacyFailsPodcast/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1856652614380207/Twitter: https://twitter.com/wdfpodcastPatreon: www.patreon.com/WhenDiplomacyFailsWebsite: www.wdfpodcast.comBibliography: www.wdfpodcast.com/source-materials/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
The fifth episode of the Aura of Greatness Podcast series on Ernesto Che Guevara continues through the early life of Che Guevara. This episode traces Che's life through his first experience with love to the start of his trip through South America on Alberto's motorcycle. The second half of the episode strays from the narrative in order to check in with the world outside Argentina. We discuss the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine, United Fruit Company, South America, Colombia, Jorge Gaitan, and others. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Answer To Stalin-Beginning The Cold War Watch the video version at Public Access America https://youtu.be/d5ArYBv_wzs Although the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union had brought victory in World War II, wartime cooperation meant glossing over many serious differences between the two. Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Soviet leaders had been claiming that communism and capitalism could never peacefully coexist. Beginning in the 1930s Josef Stalin had tried to reach some sort of understanding with the West, but only because he viewed Nazi Germany as the greater threat. Indeed, after concluding that the West was not interested in working with him, he made his own agreement with Hitler in 1939. That agreement, of course, was quickly forgotten after the German invasion of the Soviet Union two years later. After the United States entered the war in December 1941 the administration began encouraging Americans to view the Soviet Union not as a threat, but rather as a partner both for victory over the Axis and for maintaining peace in the postwar world. In newspaper and magazine articles, speeches and Hollywood films, Americans were told again and again that although the Russian people had a different economic system, they were equally committed to democratic values and to a peaceful, stable world order. This message, hammered home from 1942 to 1945, meant that after the war Americans would be in for a rude shock. Agreements regarding the postwar world were reached at Yalta and Potsdam, but the Soviets wasted no time in violating them. After driving German forces out of Eastern Europe they set about creating communist puppet states throughout the region, apparently ignoring their promises to allow democratic elections there. Having just won a world war, they seemed intent on setting the stage for another. To the new administration of Harry Truman, this behavior was reminiscent of Hitler's in the 1930s. Like many of the statesmen of his age, he believed that the proper means of responding to an international bully was a credible threat of force; "appeasement" was a dirty word, as it would only lead to new demands. Thus Truman decided on a strategy known as "containment," in which the Soviets would be prevented—militarily if necessary—from using force to export their ideology abroad. Containment would, in fact, remain the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for the next fifty years. Containment assumed many different forms. Under the Truman Doctrine the president pledged to defend "free peoples" everywhere through economic and military aid. The Marshall Plan provided billions of dollars for economic recovery to Western Europe, lest misery in France, Germany, and Italy lead to communist electoral victories in those countries. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a formal military alliance, and a clear message to Moscow—the United States would fight to defend Western Europe. Ultimately it would lead to actual war in Korea. Containment was not without its critics, and among the most perceptive was journalist Walter Lippman. Lippman believed that the result would be an ongoing "cold war" that might never involve actual combat, but would continue to drain American resources as the United States was committed to resist communism everywhere it might appear. And indeed, "Cold War" is exactly the term that has come to define the entire period from 1945 to 1989. In this curriculum unit students will learn how the Cold War began, from the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945 through the formation of NATO in 1949. National Archives and Records Administration U.S. Information Agency. (1982 - 10/01/1999) ARC Identifier 47588 / Local Identifier 306.832. Source Link https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.47588 Copyright Link https://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
When President Harry Truman announced a huge military aid package to Greece in 1947 it signalled a sea-change in America's stance in the growing Cold War, and showed a willingness to commit fully to the fight. This podcast explores the wider context of that decision, and challenges students to consider: What does this all really show us? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.
When President Harry Truman announced a huge military aid package to Greece in 1947 it signalled a sea-change in America's stance in the growing Cold War, and showed a willingness to commit fully to the fight. This podcast explores the wider context of that decision, and challenges students to consider: What does this all really show us? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
An audio revision guide providing an overview of relations between the USA and the USSR in the years immediately following the Second World War. Includes Stalin's control of eastern Europe, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Aid, Berlin Blockade.
The warfare state does not want peace, it wants war. Conducting a permanent war requires three things. There must be an underlying convincing belief that the war is worthwhile. Some interest groups need to stand to gain money or power. And, crises need to provoke reliable and ongoing responses. World peace is not desirable.After WWII, the US was a global superpower. Only the US had atomic weapons and could militarily dictate to the world. The onset of the Cold War (1950s-1970s) with Russia is blamed on many factors, but Raico’s essay on this issue is the best starting point. See Assessing the Presidency.The National Security Act was passed in 1947. The CIA and DOD became shrouded in deep secrecy. Information was often fabricated. The Truman Doctrine in 1947 stated how America would act in the world. An arms race was necessary. Massive global surveillance was necessary. Global deployment of troops was necessary. The Korean Action saved the warfare state because it paved the way for Congress to pay for defense spending. The Cold War cost $16 trillion. It was a substantial part of the American economy. Congressmen used the military budget as a giant slush fund for their districts.Vietnam was responsible for a massive turning against the war until 1970 and war sentiment became positive again with the hostage takings in Iran in the late 70s.From the 2001 History of Liberty seminar.
We present an encore Power of Words. WAMC's Alan Chartock and Historian Dr. Richard Pfau discuss President Harry Truman's Truman Doctrine speech. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Archive.
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