President Truman's Containment Policy During The Cold War

In one of the most famous narrations, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.During the Post- World War Two times, President Truman, the successor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, guided The United States the last months of World War two and assured hope to the American people during the cold war dilemma amid the Soviet Union and the United States. The relationship between the two global superpowers was driven by a complex interplay of ideological, political, and economic factors.

President Truman responded to the threat of Communism aggression in the late 1940s through the early 1950s by endorsing the Containment policy derived by US diplomat and historian George F. Kennan. The central actions in the containment policy were the creation of the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan, the of West Germany, the formation of NATO, and the opposition of Communism in Korea. These actions were considered in order to avert the Domino theory of Communism. First, Truman’s first action of containment was to accommodate a massive influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes, re-establish industries, and produce food, and the latter required assurances against a resurgent Germany or intrusions from the Soviet Union and to stop the economy’s deterioration. The Truman Doctrine was a policy that would provide economic and military assistance to countries threatened by a communist ideology through the Containment policy. This Doctrine was instituted on March 2, 1947, after Great Britain could no longer afford to provide anti-communist aid to Greece and Turkey, that were Truman noted that

It was divided equally between the United States, France, Great Britain and The Soviet Union. The Berlin Blockade took place on April 1, 1948, directed by the Soviet Union Leader, Joseph Stalin cut off supply routes from Capitalist Western Berlin. The blockade was a Soviet attempt to starve out the allies in Berlin in order to gain supremacy and have the allies give up their section of the Soviet Union to administer. The blockade was the climax of the Cold War that lasted from 1947- 1948 and led to a domino effect on the allies in Western Berlin that took part in the Berlin Airlift, a voluntary action set by the allies: US, Britain, and France brought in food and supplies through mounted airlifts which became so intense that, at their height, an airplane was landing in West Berlin regularly. This Berlin Crisis brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of conflict, although a massive airlift to resupply the city for the duration of the blockade helped to prevent an outright confrontation. These events caused U.S. officials to grow increasingly wary of the possibility that the countries of Western Europe might deal with their security concerns by negotiating with the Soviets. the Truman Administration considered the possibility of forming a European-American alliance that would commit the United States to bolstering the security of Western Europe. The