Ambiguous Commitments and Uncertain Policies

Ambiguous Commitments and Uncertain Policies offers a reassessment of the Truman Doctrine. In this insightful, thorough, and carefully documented study, Judith Jeffery tests the truth of the claim that America's peacetime intervention in Greece was a model on which to base other such ventures. In March 1947, President Truman launched a program of U.S. aid to Greece. Truman saw in Greece, which had been shattered by World War II, not only a dire situation needing humanitarian aid, but also an opportunity to assert American authority in this early period of the Cold War: civil war waged by the Communist-backed guerrilla movement against the government was threatening to further destroy the country. The president and his administration thus dispatched American troops with the directive to destroy the Communist forces. The defeat of the Communists in 1949 was hailed as a great U.S. military achievement. Did this achievement come at the expense of the Truman Doctrine—which made explicit that the first priority of President Truman and his administration in defeating communism was to improve the standard of living in Greece? How do claims about the success of the aid program measure up against the original intentions of the Administration in mid-1947 and against the program's real outcome at the beginning of the 1950s? What was the real story behind the Greek Communist defeat? Jeffery's cogent analysis of events from 1947 to 1952 provides fodder for today's heavily contested debates about U.S. foreign policy and intervention.

Judith S. Jeffery received a Ph.D. in American Studies from Flinders University of South Australia. She is an archivist with the South Australian government.