Presidential Cold War Doctrines: What Are They Good For?

It is no overstatement to say that access to formerly classified material produced by and for the highest levels of the U.S. government has been and will remain fundamental to our field, even as scholars continue to push the field in new and exciting directions that move well beyond the confines of official government actors.1 The program for the 2023 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Conference provides ample evidence of the importance the Society places on access to previously classified materials.2 Many of the papers presented and books discussed over the conference’s three days made use of previously classified materials, as did much of the recent scholarship announced in publishers’ advertisements and arrayed at their display tables. The conference’s plenary session highlighted past and ongoing efforts to ensure access, and issues surrounding records access were the subject of Director of the National Security Archive Tom Blanton’s talk at the Saturday luncheon. Tom and his team have spearheaded all manner of efforts on behalf of records access.3 Our collective debt to them is enormous.

Executive Order 13526 of 2009, which currently governs the handling of information related to U.S. national security, provides for three levels of classification: “Confidential,” “Secret,” and “Top Secret,” depending on a document’s degree of sensitivity, and delineates who within the federal government can have access to such materials. While recognizing “that the American people [must] be informed of the activities of their Government” and that U.S. “progress depends on the free flow of information both within the Government and to the American people,” it goes on to note that restricting access to some information is necessary “to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, our homeland security, and our interactions with foreign nations.” Most previously classified materials are supposed to be released within twenty-five years of origination, at which time they become open to researchers.4 The reality, however, has been very different. Delays in basic declassification have become the norm, and the National Declassification Center, established by EO 13526 “to advance the declassification and public release of historically valuable permanent records while maintaining national security,” has a backlog totaling millions of pages.5 Ongoing glitches and delays in routine declassification aside, the books and articles that make up the corpus of writing in our field make abundantly clear that scholars have used previously classified materials to great effect.

Their many deep dives into formerly classified materials have unraveled the intricacies of internal policymaking, tracked the give and take of high-level discussions, and helped us to understand efforts to achieve consensus, the costs of dissent, and the various considerations that go into making key foreign policy decisions. But notwithstanding the importance that classified materials have played in our field, there is also value, I believe, in public-facing foreign policy statements. Such statements can take many forms.

Presidents often use their inaugural addresses to spell out their foreign policy goals.6 And international developments are often included in annual State of the Union addresses.7 The norms of an open society require these kinds of statements so that the public can be kept informed about the United States’ role in the world. Presidents also often discuss foreign policy matters in speeches to civic groups, political organizations, and other entities, most commonly in an attempt to gin up public support for new initiatives.8 And, of course, they often deliver dedicated addresses to Congress or the nation on foreign policy question of extreme importance. The discussion that follows will briefly explore some of those statements, specifically, six discrete presidential doctrines during the Cold War period.

These doctrines were enunciated in a variety of media, from stand-alone addresses on specific international crises, to State of the Union addresses, remarks to reporters, and public speeches. Whatever the form, they were all performative pieces crafted with the express purpose of advancing a foreign policy goal or principle. They carry no force of international law.9 Yet they were not mere words on a page—or in a radio or television broadcast or public speech or address.

They were important statements of U.S. policy at the time and can be invaluable vehicles for scholars today. They illuminate the Cold War’s progression from Western Europe to other parts of the world. They demonstrate the way the nation’s domestic conditions affected foreign policy decisions, whether that meant expanding or contracting them.

And they reveal that the exigencies of the Cold War often placed a greater priority on containing communism than promoting democracy and other traditional American values. Collective study of these doctrines has heretofore been the province of international relations specialists, while historians have primarily considered individual doctrines in relative isolation from each other.10 This essay, a preliminary attempt to rectify that situation, will explore each doctrine’s purpose, contemporary context (both foreign and domestic), and overall importance, particularly for the evolving conception of the U.S. national interest. By considering these doctrines from a long-term historical perspective, its overall goal is to demonstrate their utility for helping to explicate U.S.

Cold War foreign policy. Although the story of the Truman Doctrine’s promulgation is well known, recounting its major contours in some detail will help to provide a general framework for my of study of presidential doctrines in their totality.11 On March 12, 1947, the thirty-third president, Harry S. Truman, delivered an eighteen-minute midday address to a joint session of Congress.12 Officially titled “Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey,” it was a response to Great Britain’s announcement that it could no longer support the conservative government in Greece’s struggle against a multi-faceted insurgency.

In this way, it was like most other presidential doctrines during the Cold War in responding to an immediate crisis. The heart of Truman’s message was the assertion “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.”13 The Truman Doctrine drew on a host of internal documents, most notably George F. Kennan’s February 1946 “Long Telegram” and the so-called Clifford-Elsey Report, “American Relations with the Soviet Union,” completed in September of that year.

Painting the Soviet Union as implacably motivated by ideology and dismissing all thought that Moscow might be pursuing legitimate security concerns in its foreign policy, they advocated a concerted policy of containment.14 Thus, rather than a sudden response to the British withdrawal from the Mediterranean, the Truman Doctrine message packaged for public consumption ideas that had actually been circulating within the administration for some time. Like U.S. propaganda during World War II, Truman’s message used bipolar framing to distinguish the hopeful non-communist world led by the United States from the controlled, repressive, and fearful societies of the Soviet Union and its satellites.15 While the former was “based upon the will of the majority” and “distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression,” the latter was “based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority” and reliant “upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.”16 The idea that the world could be divided neatly into two camps was an oversimplification of the world as it existed in 1947. Yet it remained the dominant worldview of every U.S. presidential administration through Ronald Reagan’s.17 The traits Truman attributed to the Free World would later be included as what Mary Ann Glendon has termed “the spiritual, public, and political rights” enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) approved by the UN General Assembly in December 1948.18 These sorts of rights reflected the best of the U.S. political tradition and constituted areas where the United States considered itself to set the world standard.

Although the Truman Doctrine predated the UDHR by twenty-two months, it anticipated the political rights listed in that document in the way it described the U.S.-led Free World.19 It also signaled the United States’ intention to cast the East-West dichotomy in ideological and political terms, showcasing what the administration saw as the most positive features of U.S. society—coincidentally areas where Soviet society was particularly lacking.20 Accordingly, from the Truman Doctrine on, the United States on a to Soviet of or what to the of Soviet In this way, they to political in the Soviet with the rights as reflected in the Truman’s to the government aside, his message to Congress also that that government was and made and other scholars have its were many and in a of the nation’s “to than and the of of their and or to The were not in with the of and freedom Truman in his that it U.S. support it was not from the of against the the government could into a democratic This the not of non-communist a of U.S. foreign policy a as F. has the United States support for democracy on the of But U.S. would have beyond Greece and the In an of what would later become as the Truman that to the of Greece and would and to the It have a upon those in Europe peoples are against great to their and their while they the of In other the very that the was to to the would to and for peoples to their freedom and the of to the as well as to the of to Greece and in this Truman advocated and The for to Greece and was and set the United States on the to a program of foreign the Cold It also reflected the nation’s material to other Great for which was or its in parts of the the United States had the Truman’s message made to take on new other was and to and the of Greece to The for those two the to U.S. in to the of the as the the and and with a host of Cold War and Although Truman in that the material the United States could to were also in his State of the Union message in that they were to the than Truman was that the American people had the will to what was necessary to what in his the against By the time in that was the Truman of the United States’ role in the world. The had a of and that from to the in to “the and policy of and to the of the people in have been into the of the of support for the of and in the the administration a foreign policy like its that was it was of the that Like it was of in this in the The of had been set against in the that in the in The by the were by the Soviet in those two the by Britain’s and the that the would to in and with these days his to a joint session of did not his State of the Union the of what had to that that while that address would to the international there was in the that immediate situation, in an address that considerations over the Truman Doctrine to was that of the of had cast their on the which was an important and and a of to of and Soviet of the would be for the and for many other free would be subject to that “the United States must make its to support the of the of the this much like the Truman But assertion that U.S. could the of the armed of the United States to and protect the and political 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there in a address on and remarks to on that were over radio and to the delivered a television address to the nation on American must and will not this of government in the Western in other was placed that within the context of the of American of communism as with the of the to that U.S. in the to the of the other of the deep in the speech was a of the Truman Doctrine’s of the that made the of the Free World the importance of “the of in the Western his that the would be to a government that was by the will of the and to for every with democratic But in that his for the Great Society at that such a government would be every of every to the to the to the government is the and the and the of all the In this way, the of his the the of for the at the Truman two previously had for Greece and of to the be considered against the of U.S. to at in March in and the in both was to that could and the Great Society at the can in up the reflected to to political its on and its of The Doctrine was 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to that on for their did not a U.S. from On the in the world would the nation to remain a great it could use its and at a overall many of these ideas in his inaugural address in time has will make every other nation’s our or make every other nation’s our as the of each nation to its also the of each nation to its historical of course, a of that the United States other “to this is not the to address that on to the idea of with a push for government at to have with the of to all and in and at “the time has to from the of The Doctrine a major of U.S. to in the which played a major role in the from which included and were not But they were most And that made them of U.S. the United States the other way at the domestic and of important non-communist U.S. they had no to support no they might In this way, it to both and the like Cold War was not to It was with the of In other it was in support for it is not to that with his would in that The on which had “the fundamental American to rights the rights that were in the UDHR and in the And inaugural address had his intention to a foreign policy that on not on the of on the of the of the in and to to the nation’s foreign policy. that democracy the of the of can the of those who rights to their U.S. of course, had of so was a new to U.S. for their domestic This is not the to address the of that policy. it to they were and often attempt to move U.S. foreign policy from the Cold War in December Soviet In a address to the nation on the Soviet of international and the United and the of a government to an people,” that on considerations in a of the Truman In the of the however, on to is a to over much of the the importance of the days later in his State of the Union our be attempt by outside force to of the will be as an on the of the United States of and such an will be by In a to a Soviet with a U.S. was to the Doctrine’s of force in the and the to use force to in the Western But where Soviet of during would primarily have U.S. 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In this way, they for an U.S. foreign policy in to the nation’s Cold War Cold War doctrines can demonstrate and within and presidential the of the Cold War on the nation’s and and provide into of Cold War national they the U.S. during the Cold particularly as the East-West struggle beyond can also use them as for the Cold War’s On a this is in the U.S. and many of the doctrines however, Cold War doctrines also reveal the goal of containing communism at all costs led the United States to the other way at the of a host of Cold War and In other they demonstrate the of the Cold War for American as political principle. Cold War Although this of presidential doctrines has not been meant to that they a of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold it I made the for those doctrines their and other public-facing foreign policy statements, not the to formerly classified materials, and those will remain a of scholarship in our But they not be our In the U.S. Cold War doctrines are a and our Mary Ann is of at State United and The United Great and and the The UN for for in the of which the of as in