Why Did The Truman Fight The Cold War

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In order to fight the Cold War, President Harry S Truman oversaw a revolution in American foreign policy. Characterized by policies and institutions such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Berlin airlift, the strategy of containment redefined liberal internationalism and involved the United States in the world as never before. Despite such programs, however, the Communists made gains in atomic weapons, propaganda, Europe, and China in the late 1940s. In 1950, NSC 68 — primarily and theoretically — and Korea secondarily and practically — confirmed for Truman what he already believed: In the end, the Cold War would be won or lost on moral grounds. But he could not turn to the United Nations for moral authority, since…show more content…
He had seen the inroads made by Soviet propaganda in western Europe, particularly in 1947 through 1949, and believed that American will and policies had defeated the USSR’s efforts to sway elections and upset the Marshall Plan. The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and, in the following year, Radio Liberation (soon Radio Liberty) became part of the institutional fabric of containment.[5] The president thought that he had learned correctly from recent history, and he went on to the next step of his strategy in the partnership between the public and private sectors: the moral suasion and power of faith. As leader of the strongest power of the free world, he aimed to harness and coordinate the world’s religions in an effort to stop the Communists and what he viewed as their elemental…show more content…
Just as this belief in equality had enabled America to build a great nation of liberty, Truman added, so too could it serve as the foundation for world peace. The president held that equality before God, recognized in good government, would undergird a brotherhood of man — much in the sense that Pius XII sketched in their Christmas 1949 exchange of messages — around the world.[10] Truman believed that peace would follow, not from world government but from the understanding of equality, morality and religion, strength, and freedom. “The greatest obstacle to peace,” he said, “is a modern tyranny led by a small group who have abandoned their faith in God. These tyrants have forsaken ethical and moral beliefs. They believe that only force makes right. They are aggressively seeking to expand the area of their domination.” But he did not claim that ridding the world of tyranny would bring eternal peace. As a Christian, he saw both the “barriers of ignorance and poverty” and the “barriers of tyranny”; as a Christian statesman, however, he concentrated his attention on the worst

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