The Geostrategic and Geopolitical Rationale for the Truman Doctrine

and its Strategic Influence in South-Eastern Mediterranean

by

Vassilios Damiras, Ph.D. (ABD)

Prepared for and Presented

 at
Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society
Palmer House Hilton
Chicago, IL
October 21-23, 2005

3
 Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his deep appreciation to the personal archives of Mrs.
Frances Myers Williams Schlickenmaier, who was the personal secretary of President
Harry S. Truman. In addition, I appreciate the extensive analysis of American Foreign
Policy generously provide by Jonathan Riggs, a fellow Ph.D. candidate in the Political
Science Department, Loyola University Chicago. The author assumes responsibility for
any errors.
 We make war that we may live in peace.
-- Aristotle

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay
any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose
any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
-- John F. Kennedy

Now and in the future, Americans will live

as free people, not in fear, and never
at the mercy of any foreign plot or power.

-- President George W. Bush

 The Geostrategic and Geopolitical Rationale for the Truman Doctrine

and its Strategic influence in South-Eastern Mediterranean

Introduction: The Genesis of the Doctrine

The geostrategic role of the Truman Doctrine in helping prevent the fall of the

then-kingdom of Greece to the menace of communism during the late 1940s created a

new, powerful design for American diplomatic and strategic planners that they utilized

throughout the Cold War. Its precepts continue as critical foundations in the current war

against global terror under the Bush administration. This paper will analyze the

geostrategic and geopolitical significance of the Truman Doctrine; moreover, it will

indicate that this specific policy combined the theoretical principals of realism and

idealism. It is argued that Harry S. Truman established the foundations of American

liberal imperialism in his readiness to fight the bloodthirsty monster of Soviet/Slavic

communism as that ideological menace attempted to dominate the Balkans and Greece’s

geographic region. Finally, execution of the principles of the Truman Doctrine

established a strong military presence in the southeastern Mediterranean area and the

Middle East, which presence, with its strategic implications, prevails to the present day.

President Truman, influenced by his classical education, believed that in

protecting Greece from communism, American military advisers defended the cradle of

Western civilization, the birthplace of Pericles of Athens and Alexander the Great, and

indeed of their own American civilization. Furthermore, Greece was the originator of the

glorious Byzantine Empire and the Greek Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. Truman

undoubtedly recognized that the modern Greek socio-political system was not as pure in

6
democratic and cultural values as during its ancient times; nevertheless the United States,

in Truman’s interpretation, had an obligation to assist the country that provided the tenets

of American democracy. In addition, he realized that through Greece, American military

might significantly shape the region.1

The Truman Doctrine opened a new page in American foreign policy. President

Truman’s reaction to the Korean military crisis in 1950 relied on his strong conviction,

which he stated as, “This is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, there

won’t be another step.”2 Following Truman’s precedent, President Dwight D. Eisenhower

perceived the ongoing military crises in Indochina and the Middle East through the

geopolitical and geostrategic lessons learned in the Greek Civil War (1947-1949),

warning that if these strategic regions fell to Soviet communism, Europe and other

regions could likewise easily collapse under Soviet totalitarian pressures. During the

early part of the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson (both

Democrats) strongly argued that the Greek case provided an example for American

military action in Vietnam.3

Moreover, Walt Rostow, Chair of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning

council, assured U.S. Secretary Dean Rusk, “There is no reason we cannot win as clear a

victory in South Vietnam as in Greece, Malaysia, and the Philippines.” Henry Cabot

Lodge, Jr., a Republican who had strongly supported the Truman doctrine in its infancy,
1 Howard Jones, “A Reassessment of the Truman Doctrine and Its Impact on Greece and U.S. Foreign
Policy,” in Demetrios James Caraley and Eugene T. Rossides, eds., The Truman Doctrine of Aid to Greece:
A Fifty-Year Retrospective (Washington, D.C.: American Hellenic Institute Foundation and The Academy
of Political Science, 1998), 24.
2 Bruce R. Kunihold, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy

in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 420.
3 Ibid., 420.

7
declared in a 1964 speech, “We, of the Free World, won in Greece…. And we can win in

Vietnam.”4 In 1965, immediately after the American government dispatched its first

combat troops to South Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson made reference to the

Truman Doctrine in reassuring the American public that the U.S. armed forces would win

the war against communist aggression in Southeast Asia as they had won a similar war in

Greece in the 1940s. The following year, U.S. Secretary of State Rusk quoted President

Truman’s 1947 address to U.S. Congress in justifying the American military involvement

in South Vietnam.5

In the current war on terror, George W. Bush has used the basic foundations of

the Truman Doctrine to combat Al Qaeda around the globe. The Bush Doctrine uses

liberal imperialism to fight terrorism and to promote American democratic values

throughout the world and particularly in the Middle East. It is historically unquestionable

that the Truman Doctrine indelibly influenced both past and present American foreign

and defense policies.

An Analysis of the Truman Doctrine in a Historical-Political Perspective

There have been disparate interpretations of the Truman Doctrine since its

inception and implementation. The Truman Doctrine has been hotly debated since its

promulgation. Critics have called it the “first shot of the Cold War”; an American global

license for liberal imperialism; an exaggerated response to an imagined communist threat

that lead to the monster of McCarthyism; a reactionary foreign policy that placed the

4 Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1973), 108.
5 Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969 (New York, NY:

Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 31.

8
American government on the side opposite freedom, and of political and social reform;

strong proof of an “arrogance of power” that continuously forced the United States into

other countries’ domestic political quarrels.6

Defenders of the Truman Doctrine argued that this specific policy illustrated

American determination and ingenuity in the fight against communism. The Doctrine was

representative of the American commitment to free world ideas and beliefs against

totalitarianism. When the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were combined,

magnanimous financial aid resulted, initially for Greece and Turkey and later, for other

nation-states under threat from communism. Yet, in focusing on these important issues,

historians have failed to credit the Truman administration with creating a foreign policy

designed to protect freedom by helping embattled countries help themselves.7

The tenets of the Truman Doctrine left their imprint on the seminal stages of

American foreign policy that was adaptable, restrained, and not necessarily based on

military power. Later, when President Kennedy introduced his program of “flexible

response,” Truman and his advisors (some advisors later joining Kennedy) adopted a

foreign policy intended to fight the constant, ever-growing political and strategic

challenges to democracy, with a broad arsenal of responses corresponding to the socio-

political danger at hand.8

Moreover, President Truman’s Doctrine arguably looked forward to the Nixon

6 Judith S. Jeffrey, Ambiguous Commitments and Uncertain Policies: The Truman Doctrine in Greece
1947-1952 (New York, NY: Lexington Books, 200), 12.
7 George Crews McGhee, The U.S.-Turkish-NATO Middle East Connection: How the Truman Doctrine

Contained the Soviets in the Middle East (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 24.
8 Howard Jones, “A New Kind of War: America’s Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece”

(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989), 40.

9
Doctrine of the 1970s, which called for partnerships based on the nation at risk sharing

the burden of safeguarding itself by, among other terms, providing the bulk of the

manpower needed for its security. The Truman administration’s approach to the Greek

problem proved idealistic in purpose, yet realistic in application. Its composite thrust was

political, economic, and military, allowing for adjustments and fine-tuning as the nature

of the threat changed. The political facet included creation of a stable democracy in the

Greek political arena, and the economic emphasis lay in creating viable economic

opportunities in the Greek population. The military focus was upon the capable defense

of Greek national interests by modern Greek armed forces, assisted by their American

counterparts. The policy constituted a viable and effective response to multifaceted

aggressions in which real victory lay in convincing democracy’s enemies that they could

not win.9

Although various historians have long argued and debated the political and

strategic reasons for the Greek government’s victory, one observation has been especially

stressed: American military aid alone was solely responsible. The Greek communists

could well have gone on indefinitely if they had not switched from guerrilla tactics to

conventional warfare, and if they had continued to receive refuge and outside military

assistance. The conclusion has been that Tito’s defection from the Soviet bloc broke the

guerrillas’ resistance, and enabled American firepower to complete the task. Although

these ingredients surely proved vital to the final outcome of the Greek civil war, the full

explanation does not lie either in the Balkans or in American military assistance.10

9 Stephen G. Xydis, “The Truman Doctrine in Perspective,” Balkan Studies 8 (1967): 250.
10 Ibid. 251.

10
 The Truman administration achieved its objectives in Greece because of a flexible

American foreign policy that was global in theory but constrained by reality. White

House advisers at that time had defined the nation’s interests in Greece in relation to the

rest of the world, developed a strategy that had manageable goals, and worked within the

limitations of America’s capacity to change or influence events and people. Most

significantly, they developed and cultivated a Greek populace rich in democratic values

and traditions, and staunchly nationalistic, who opposed communism and welcomed U.S.

aid. America’s foreign policymakers kept the struggle within the technical confines of a

civil war, repeatedly refusing to permit the conflict to grow into larger war. After winning

the financial aid bill, the administration toned down its rhetoric to avoid military

confrontation with the communists, quietly persuaded the British to remain in Greece as

part of a bilateral security effort, and thus gained time for the American strategy to reach

fruition.11

The Truman Doctrine provided the rationale for a global strategy that rested on

balanced, limited responses to carefully defined and continually changing levels of global

risk. In 1947, the communist crisis in Greece necessitated strong military aid and

operational advice; once that specific threat subsided in late 1949, the American

government shifted its focus to concentrate on long-range economic rehabilitation.

During the Greek involvement, the Truman administration considered every option from

outright withdrawal to direct military intervention. Decisions resulted from

recommendations and proposals presented not only by specialists in Greek and Turkish

11John L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, NY: New
York University Press, 1972), 317-318.

11
affairs, but also from those who brought European and Asian perspectives to the issue at

hand.

Vital information came from British and Greek observers and analysts, the U.S.

State and Defense departments, the U.S. National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, the famous Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other intelligence

organizations, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Army Intelligence. The

new foreign and defense policies were engendered from careful deliberation regarding

their impact on Greece and neighboring nation-states, on America’s allies and the

nonaligned countries, and on Americans at home. Averting unilateral and more direct

involvement was crucial; the possibility of graceful de-escalation or even total

withdrawal was debated, as were the effects of events in Greece on global strategy.

During all this time, the Truman White House undertook continual evaluations and

assessments of the Greek dispute to keep the American commitment focused, flexible and

under control.12

On the economic level, United States did the following:

• assisted in the creation, for the time in Greek history, of a national electric
power system, a grid designed by American engineers and modeled on the
TVA, with a quasi-independent, public corporate entity interlinking new
hydroelectric generating stations at Ladhon, Agra and Louros with Athens
Piraeus Electric Company (APECO) in Athens and a new thermal generating
station based on the mining of lignite at Aliveri;
• supported the expansion and modernizing of Greece’s traditional industries
(cement, textiles, fertilizers) while promoting new ones: copper and aluminum
fabrication, appliances, truck and bus bodies, diesel engines, farm equipment
and tools, pharmaceuticals and paints;
• helped enable the re-opening and re-equipping of the chromite, bauxite and
pyrite mines, and the clearing and re-equipping of the nation’s ports and
12Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War (Annapolis, MA: Naval
Institute Press, 2000), 40.

12
 harbors, and the Corinth Canal;
• re-equipped the fishing fleet and agricultural processing and storage plants;
• helped develop village potable water supplies, completing the anti-malaria
program;
• contributed to modernization of hospitals and clinics;
• provided for re-building and improving of highway and railway networks
from Kalamata in the south to Alexandroupolis in the north;
• facilitated the building and repair of museums, archeological sites and hotels
for dream of future tourism, which still lay on the horizon.13

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provided the following financial support:

• to create and train a Greek force roughly equivalent to America’s county

agents-to bring new knowledge to the Greek village, to instruct in the use of
fertilizers and pesticides, contour plowing, seed selection and animal
husbandry;
• to undertake large-scale land reclamation works, i.e., draining swamps,
controlling seasonal flooding, preparing irrigation systems, and reclaiming
alkaline land;
• to supply the government’s mechanical cultivation service and its well-
drilling service with heavy equipment (tractors, draglines, rotary drills,
bulldozers and trucks);
• to construct farm-to-market roads and to link, for the first time in modern
Greek history, formerly isolated villages with trunk and provisional highway
systems and to market towns.14

Upsurges in the Greek economy and in agricultural production resulted. In

military affairs, the American government created special programs to arm and train the

Greek armed forces. Eventually, Greece and Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO). The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan helped create a

Greek nation-state, largely self-sustaining and self-reliant, ready to weather and negotiate

future military, political, or economic threats. The United States became a guardian of

13 James C. Warren, Jr., “Origins of the “Greek Economic Miracle:” The Truman Doctrine and Marshall
Plan Developing and Stabilization Programs,” in Demetrios James Caraley, and Eugene T. Rossides, eds.,
The Truman Doctrine of Aid to Greece: A Fifty-Year Retrospective (Washington, D.C.: American Hellenic
Institute Foundation and The Academy of Political Science, 1998), 84-85.
14 Ibid., 85-86

13
Greek democracy; in some respects, the American government behaved as Hercules did

during times of crisis. Without American military aid, it was at least plausible that Greece

would have succumbed to the Soviet communist expansion. If the Soviets had managed

to control the Greek countryside, the result would be detrimental for the survival of the

free world. 15

Control of the Bosporus Passage and the Dardanelles Straits was the raison d’etre

underlying the American posture and strategic actions within the region, largely in

response to ongoing Soviet aspirations and intentions related to clear and direct access to

the Aegean. In 1945, during the Potsdam Summit meeting, Stalin openly claimed the

right to create military bases in the Thessaloniki or Alexandropoulos harbors as

alternatives that would bypass the Turkish Straits. Simultaneously, the Soviet totalitarian

regime exerted acute pressure on the Turkish government, targeted at revision of the

Montreaux Convention in order to gain common control of the Straits with the Turkish

Republic (Proposals of June 22, 1946).16

The Truman precepts buttressed the policy of containment and organized

resistance against Soviet communist expansionism, and were the foundation of a long-

lasting American foreign policy with global dimensions and implications. NATO, the

American Joint Task Forces in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific communication and

surveillance installations and facility/military bases became and still are pillars of

15 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), “The Military and Geostrategic Dimensions of the Truman
Doctrine,” in Demetrios James Caraley, and Eugene T. Rossides, eds., The Truman Doctrine of Aid to
Greece: A Fifty-Year Retrospective (Washington, D.C.: American Hellenic Institute Foundation and The
Academy of Political Science, 1998), 136.
16 David H. Close, Greece Since 1945 (New York, NY: Longman, 2002), 125-126.

14
American global policy, as promulgated in the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan.17

The American engagement in World War II (1939-1945) incurred a total loss of

$341 billion and 460,000 personnel casualties. It was the greatest investment in peace and

military security any American administration had ever made in, and needed an

everlasting guarantee. Containment doctrine was viewed as the right answer to those

concerns at that time, in locations far distant from the American continent. Greece’s and

Turkey’s military roles in the Marshall Plan and later in NATO would be key factors in

the balance of power in the geostrategic system, along with European nation-states

strengthened by the American military presence on the Continent.18

One of the most meaningful strengthening forces was American military aid to

Greece and Turkey, with which they modernized their armed forces. A full network of

military bases and related facilities was organized within the framework of various

bilateral accords with the American government to support integrated security functions

in the Eastern Mediterranean. (The current Bush administration has used these facilities

to pursue the war in Iraq.)19

Crucial Greek military and strategic contributions against the Soviet communist

menace were the Aegean islands area and the island of Crete, which provided the

necessary strategic breadth and depth to defend the straits and thereby, sea access to the

Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean islands vicinity, as part of Greece’s sovereign territory,

was under Greek operational responsibility as part of NATO’s command structure

17 Note that these elements still inform the present Bush administration in its current combat against the
horrors of global terrorism.
18 Keith R. Legg, and John M. Roberts, Modern Greece: A Civilization on the Periphery (Boulder, CO:

1997), 195-196.
19 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 137-138.

15
(Commander Mediterranean East, or COMEDEAST.) In addition, Greece committed to

American bases and installations on the mainland and on the island of Crete, including

the critical Suda Bay naval base for the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet. Crete still represents a

major strategic asset in the control of North Africa and of the sea-lanes to and from the

Black Sea (and thence on to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.) Currently, the U.S.

Defense department is in the process of upgrading the Suda Bay naval base to

accommodate more naval and Special Forces assets in the fight against Al Qaeda and

other terrorist/insurgent operatives.20

The Turkish Republic, besides controlling the Straits, had to cover a wide front,

given the Soviet Union on Turkey’s eastern borders, as well as the requirement of

protecting the southeastern Mediterranean front, which borders the troubled Middle

Eastern region. The first serious problems in the functioning of the NATO defense

system arose from an antagonistic stance by Turkey against Greece in 1973, through

various Turkish claims to obtain operational control over Greek Thrace and the Aegean

Sea region. It was an early indication of Ankara’s claims against Greek territorial

sovereignty.21

Relations between the two NATO countries gradually became problematic. The

U.S./NATO defense system in the area suffered significantly. Turkey vetoed the

integration of the Greek islands into the NATO defense system in 1981. There was a

dispute initiated by the Turkish government on the legal status of the islands, questioning

20 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 138.

21 Ibid., 138.

16
previously signed treaties and Greece’s sovereign rights based on international law.22

Since 1973, Ankara has concentrated its diplomatic efforts to impose a regime of

condominium upon the Greek islands, aimed at the systematic exploration and

exploitation of undersea oil deposits in the Aegean Sea. The crisis in Greek-Turkish

relations had reached its climax with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, and with

the Greek withdrawal from the military section of NATO until 1981.23

Various scholars argue that the U.S. position of sustaining an equal distance

between Greece and Turkey indirectly impaired Greek sovereign rights in the area and

encouraged Turkish claims, which sought an unacceptable negotiation of Greek

sovereignty. The 1996 Imia crisis, in which Turkey attempted to claim rights against

Greece on Imia island, was a case in point. Today’s Turkish position is in direct conflict

with the Lausanne Treaty of July 24, 1923 and Montreaux Conventions (1936)

concerning the legal status of the Greek islands. During his official visit to Athens on

June 14, 1988, following the Greek-Turkish crisis of 1987 and the 1988 Davos talks in

Switzerland, Prime Minister Turgut Ozal was quite clear in his attitude. He put relations

with Greece on a new basis, departing from previously signed treaties, which he

characterized as “unsatisfactory.” Since then Athens and Ankara have tried to find

common grounds for negotiations. One example is that, since the earthquakes of 1999,

Turkey and Greece have developed a working relationship at Washington’s instigation

and with valuable American assistance.24

22 David H. Close, 126.

23 Keith R. Legg and John M. Roberts, 196.
24 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 138.

17
 Nevertheless, the continued Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus acutely

impairs diplomatic relations between Greece and Turkey. Athens considers Ankara to be

the number one military threat against Hellenic sovereignty. Cyprus may well be the key

to normalization of Greek-Turkish bilateral relations as an island of major strategic

significance in control of the Middle East region, and because it is related to normal oil

flow vital to Western nation-states. Various American administrations throughout the

years have tried directly or indirectly to persuade both countries to behave in a civilized

manner. However, Turkey has acted as a rogue nation-state above international law and

obligations. Regarding Greece’s issues relevant to Cyprus, the main problem is political

containment of Turkish expansionism via enforcement of UN resolutions on Cyprus. Any

attempt to force a political solution of the Cyprus dispute based on a political

compromise in favor of Turkish claims and demands in the area would be a Pyrrhic

victory for peace and American credibility, and a drastic break with Truman Doctrine

principles.25 The Truman Doctrine positioned the United States as protector of Greece

and Turkey and their respective regions, and continues to play a vital role in the current

global situation.

During the twentieth century, Greece offered much and lost many in the battles

for freedom and the democratic values. In no other period of its long history has

Hellenism suffered such great upheaval and destruction. Today’s Turkey is built on

Hellenic ruins such as those in Asia Minor, Pontos, East Thrace and Constantinople, in

Imbros and Tenedos islands, and currently in Northern Cyprus. However, for years, the

Truman Doctrine tenets have safeguarded the Greek culture and nation from both the
25 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 138.

18
communist threat and the Turkish menace.26

Conclusion: The Contemporary Implications of the Truman Doctrine

The Truman Doctrine was born out of the American geostrategic and geopolitical

perception of Greece and Turkey as key nation-states regarding security in the Middle

East, and of them as crucial to protection of American national interests in the

Mediterranean region. Greek and Turkish territory is a unified strategic area in the

American view, with both of the countries operating as supplementary security elements.

The consequence of this strategic outlook was the contemporaneous entry and integration

of both nation-states into the NATO civil-military alliance.27

During the Greek civil strife, the Truman Doctrine put into realistic practice what

Alexander the Great said in the town of Opi in 324 B.C., “For me any good foreigner is a

Greek, any bad Greek is worse than a barbarian.”28 In 1947, the “good foreigners” were

the Americans. The “bad” Greeks were the Greek communists. Greek guerrillas tried to

destroy the values of the Greek culture, but the implementation of Truman’s doctrinal

concepts stopped this barbaric process.

Although history consistently teaches us that the most convincing argument in

international relations is inextricably tied to power, the greatest achievement of political

human beings is the building of universal peace based on mutual confidence, and the

consolidation of human rights and liberties. In recognition of the value of universal

peace, the wall of European bipolarity was demolished, and all Europe set on the road to

26 David H. Close, 127.

27 David H. Close, 127.
28 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 139.

19
peace. It is not only national and military power that has made the United States a global

hegemon; it is rooted in the trust of people and in human expectations for freedom and

political and economic prosperity. The Truman Doctrine incorporated all these realistic

and idealistic norms and values.29

Moreover, the Bush administration continues to deal with current geopolitical

challenges based on the complex formulations so well developed by Truman. Present

security threats include instability in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, due

to local independence and irredentist conflicts, nationalism, terrorism, and Islamic

fundamentalism. In addition, illicit proliferation of nuclear weapons and guided missile

systems are serious dangers to U.S.-European security.30

President Bush influenced by the Truman doctrine developed ten separate

strategic themes, most of them a strong anathema to the supposed wise men and women

diplomats of the foreign ministries and delegations of the United States and across the

globe. The ten diplomatic principles in which, Bush often utilizes the words freedom,

liberty, and democracy interchangeably, are:

1. America’s overriding mission in the world is to champion freedom.

2. Democracy is for everyone in every country at all times, and it is
condescending to think otherwise.
3. America doesn’t bestow democracy, God does.
4. The unmistakable direction of history is toward freedom.
5. Democracy is the best weapon against terrorism.
6. The pursuit of freedom produces the goals of foreign policy idealists and
realists-democracy, security, and stability.
7. Democracy leads to peace among nations.
8. The best place to seek a democratic revolution is the Middle East.
9. America and Europe bear a large measure of the blame for the absence of

29 Ibid.,139-140.
30 Keith R. Legg, and John M. Roberts, 197.

20
 democracy in the Middle East.
10. A campaign for liberty has the best chance of succeeding if the United States
leads.31

Moreover President Bush stressed that, “Generations of democratic peace” would

be “accomplished by concentrating on enduring national interests,” he said. “And these

are my priorities.”32 Like President Truman also Bush perceived that the support and

promotion of democracy has been the main and most powerful element to defeat

totalitarianism and islamofasicism across the world and in south-eastern Mediterranean

Sea then and now.

Furthermore, the expansion of NATO, its more encompassing security

institutions, and its inclusion of operational areas outside its traditional borders are

important innovations emerging from the Truman Doctrine in support of the pursuit of

freedom around the globe. Today’s NATO comprises a unique, organized multinational

organization, largely responsible for pan-European security. Clearly, NATO continues to

evolve in its capability and adaptability to face the new geostrategic challenges of the 21st

century.33

The Truman tenets incorporate the theoretical principles of realism and idealism.

The military execution of this doctrine was based on realistic perceptions of how to apply

hegemonic military power in times of crisis. The idea of protecting democracy was based

on the axiomatic idealism of expanding and promoting democracy across the globe. The

31 Fred Barnes, Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George
W. Bush (New York, NY: Crown Forum, 2006), 117-118.
32 Ibid., 119.

33 Lieutenant General Photios Metalinos (Ret.), 140.

21
Truman principles coherently fused the aforementioned theoretical precepts of realism

and idealism; this is the main rationale for their continue applicability in today’s

increasingly complex geopolitical and geostrategic environment.

The Truman Doctrine was a milestone in American history and in global history,

respectively. Truman based his foreign policy on concepts from his classical education

and precepts of classical liberalism. He was a true student of these venerable ideas and

beliefs. This eclectic and sophisticated educational/philosophical background assisted

him to create a cogent and cohesive foreign policy, which has had an enduring effect on

American decision-making processes, policies and outcomes.

22