Containment and the Truman Doctrine
How containment became US policy: the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the division of Europe.
The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
In March 1947, President Truman addressed Congress to request aid for Greece and Turkey, both facing communist pressure. His speech declared 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.' This became known as the Truman Doctrine — the formal adoption of containment as US foreign policy.
Three months later, Secretary of State George Marshall announced the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan), which channeled $13.3 billion ($170 billion in today's dollars) to rebuild Western European economies. The plan was offered to all European nations, including the Soviet Union, but Stalin rejected it and pressured Eastern European states to do the same. The Marshall Plan was simultaneously humanitarian, economic, and strategic: prosperous democracies were less likely to turn communist.
The Soviet response was the Molotov Plan (later COMECON), which created an economic bloc among communist states. Europe was now formally divided into two competing economic systems.