Why was the Truman Doctrine proclaimed in 1947?
The three months from February to May 1947 were a pivotal moment in American history. During this time the United States, by developing and accepting the Truman Doctrine, made a large and significant change in its role in the world. “The epoch of isolation and occasional intervention is ended,” The New York Times declared during the national debate. “It is being replaced by an epoch of responsibility.” Truman’s leading biographer, Alonzo Hamby, noted a half-century later: “What Truman promised was a long engagement with the wider world in the interest of defending democracy against totalitarianism. The Truman Doctrine had been the call to arms of the Cold War” (pp. 387, 401). The United States had entered a new kind of conflict, marked by an arms race, a Red Scare, major wars in Korea and Vietnam, global polarization, and, ultimately, the defeat of Communism.
