A soft approach and the Truman Doctrine
In March 1947, following Britain’s abrupt decision to terminate its assistance to Greece and Turkey, President Truman declared America’s decision to defend its national interests by supporting “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” so that they could “work out their own destinies in their own way.” This global strategy was to be pursued “primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.” Military support was neither mentioned nor excluded. The strategy’s first implementation was to be in Greece, where a communist insurrection was under way; Turkey, under direct Soviet pressure over territorial issues, was also included. It was subsequently specified that containment did not apply to China, where Mao’s communists were driving Chiang’s nationalist regime out of power.
Although the president’s speech did not mention the Soviet Union, in congressional testimonies and other presentations containment’s purpose was revealed in apocalyptic language. In the words of Undersecretary of State Acheson, Moscow’s pressures on Greece, Turkey and Iran threatened that a “highly possible breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration” in which Greece was the key: “Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the East. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France… The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles of history at minimal cost. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play.” Suddenly, intermittent communist-led guerrilla activity in Greece was given dramatic urgency and near-global significance… But if the Truman Doctrine was intended to counter Soviet expansion, its applicability to Greece was hardly self-evident.
Historically, US-Greek governmental relations had been normal but unexceptional. Washington’s diplomats saw no important national interests extending to the Balkans and President Roosevelt considered Southeastern Europe a stage for British-Soviet disputes which America should avoid. In the early 1940s, with Greece under enemy occupation, its government in exile depended for its very existence on the British who, under Prime Minister Churchill, struggled to retain Greece in Britain’s sphere by supporting anti-communists, preventing the Leftists from dominating the resistance movement, and endorsing King George II, who in 1936 had installed the Metaxas dictatorship. In September 1944, as the Germans were withdrawing from Greece, Soviet commanders in Bulgaria rebuffed requests from top Greek communists to send troops to “liberate” the country and, coincidentally, enable the KKE to seize power. In December, American officials attributed a communist-led uprising in Athens to war-related upheavals, traditional political divisions and, above all, to Britain’s highhanded support for the unpopular monarch. The State Department denounced British interference in Greece and the US Navy in Italy refused to transport Commonwealth troops to fight the insurgents. For his part, preoccupied with the still-raging war in Europe, Stalin remained a passive observer of events in Greece. To Dimitrov, his Bulgarian adviser on the Balkans, he complained that, by ignoring his advice to avoid force and expecting the Red Army to come to their assistance, the KKE had “acted foolishly.”
In 1946, the KKE’s appeals to Moscow for guidance and support for its revolutionary goals received only Delphic responses, advising patience and caution. As guerrilla attacks on government outposts escalated into civil war, there was no credible evidence that the violence was caused by Moscow’s ambitions. Armed bands crossed the porous northern borders into neighboring communist states and received refuge and assistance, including weapons and supplies. By 1948, with American military and economic support to the government side in full swing, foreign assistance to the insurgents gradually intensified and was eventually organized across Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.
It was disrupted by the Stalin-Tito break but continued even after the Yugoslavs closed their border to the insurgents whose ranks now included growing numbers of Slavo-Macedonians. Among the major items earmarked for the insurgents but never delivered were heavy artillery and aircraft.
Moscow’s role in aiding the KKE’s “Democratic Army” remained indirect and a closely guarded secret: The Greek government and its allies were unaware of it for many years. Although significant in its scope and intent, foreign assistance to the insurgents was never sufficient to match the growing superiority of the government forces in numerical strength, modern weaponry, training and combat performance. After a low start, the morale and effectiveness of the government forces rose rapidly, insuring that victory would be certain. It would also be decisive: Domestic communism no longer threatened national security.
Americans advised but did not command the Greek armed forces, and no American troops engaged in combat. The only American casualty of the civil war was an army officer who accompanied a reconnaissance plane that was shot down over insurgents’ territory; he survived the crash but was murdered by his captors. At the height of the war the dispatch of American troops to Greece was considered but, at the urging of George Kennan, architect of containment, was rejected as unnecessary and unwise.
Similarly, throughout the crisis, state institutions remained under a legitimate and democratically elected Greek government which implemented emergency legislation enacted by an elected parliament. Although the KKE was outlawed, other parties competed freely in regularly held elections. Despite the Truman Doctrine’s promise for political, economic and social reforms, the Americans’ intervention focused on national security and development programs essential for the defeat of the insurgency. Intrusive intervention and dictation, actual or perceived, soon caused widespread resentment. Disappointments over foreign policy issues such as the Cyprus problem and tensions in Greek-Turkish relations morphed into pervasive anti-Americanism. But national cohesion remained strong and was perhaps even fortified by a widely shared feeling of victimization in a grating patron-client relationship.
In the early 1950s, with the end of civil war and return to peacetime conditions, direct American assistance and interventionist measures were lifted. Over time, participation in the Marshall Plan led to steady economic development and ties with the European Community (and, eventually, to Greek membership in the European Union). Earlier, under Washington’s continued support, Greece also entered NATO, thus cementing the country’s place in the Atlantic community. However grudgingly, with the exception of the extreme Left, Greeks were satisfied with the impact of American intervention upon their country.
No less pleased were many among American foreign policy elites who saw in the Truman Doctrine a model for the projection abroad of benevolent power and competence which was well worth the effort and might be applicable elsewhere.
They could not have foreseen that the model of intervention conceived in the 1940s would gradually be so misdirected and distorted as to become a prescription for failure, dangerous to America’s national interests.
‘Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect
Iran and all to the East. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France…’