On March 12, 1947, in a speech before a joint session of Congress, President Harry Truman asked Congress to grant economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to help those countries resist Communism. The speech established what became known as the Truman Doctrine, a policy "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." As the March 16 New York Times reported, "Although the President refrained from mentioning the Soviet Union by name, there could be no mistaking his identification of the Communist state as the source of much of the unrest throughout the world." The United States and the Soviet Union had been allies during World War II, but this relationship had quickly deteriorated in the post-war years. The Soviets delayed pulling out of Iran and had, in Truman's words, "made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria." Greece and Turkey were "threatened" by Communism in different ways. Greece was in the midst of a civil war between the government and Communists supported by Yugoslavia (though only indirectly by the Soviet Union). Turkey, meanwhile, was under pressure from the Soviet Union to relinquish partial control of the Dardanelles Strait. Both countries had been receiving aid from Britain, but Britain announced in February 1947 that it would soon cut funding, prompting Truman to act. Truman's announcement marked a distinct shift in U.S. foreign policy. While the United States had traditionally been reluctant to enter conflicts outside the Americas, Truman was now pledging to intercede in conflicts all over the globe to contain the growth of Communism. The Truman Doctrine would form the basis of U.S. policy during the Cold War with the Soviet Union-in fact, many historians argue that the Cold War began with the Truman Doctrine. Over the next several years, the United States would strengthen its policy of containment through the Marshall Plan to provide economic aid to Europe, the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to protect against the Soviet Union, and the National Security Council's top-secret NSC-68 paper, which supported a military build-up to combat the Soviets. The containment policy presented in the Truman Doctrine would lead the U.S. into such conflicts as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. An August 2011 post on the Times" Opinionator blog referred to President Obama's "non-doctrine" policy on Libya, and questioned whether it was effective and what it meant for the future of U.S. foreign policy. The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky wrote similarly of President Obama's approach, "Call it the doctrine of no doctrine: using our power and influence but doing so prudently and multilaterally, with the crucial recognition that Egypt is different from Libya is different from Syria is different from someplace else. According to the foreign-policy establishment, if you want to have a self-respecting big-D doctrine, you're not supposed to recognize differences. The doctrine must guide all cases. But that is exactly the kind of thinking that has led - always - to tragedy. The Truman Doctrine was never meant to be applied to Vietnam. The Bush Doctrine was applied to Iraq based on a series of lies told to the American people. Do you think "doctrines" are a sensible way to guide foreign policy? Is it important to have a firm establishment of principles with which to approach international issues? Or is it better to take a unique approach to different issues? Do you think future history books will refer to an "Obama Doctrine"? If so, how will they define it? Learn more about what happened in history on March 12