Ideological justification of the Truman doctrine of 1947

Мета дослідження полягає у висвітленні ідеологічного обґрунтування проголошеної 12 березня 1947р. доктрини Гаррі Трумена. Показано ідеологічні передумови, що змінили зовнішню політику США після Другої світової війни. Аналітично досліджено проблему теорії та практики американської президентської риторики. На прикладі проголошення доктрини Трумена показано елементи "кризової риторики”. Проаналізовано ідеологічні суперечності двох наддержав: США та СРСР. Методологія дослідження базується на принципах історизму, об'єктивності, науковості, що дало змогу дослідити й охарактеризувати еволюцію післявоєнного американського зовнішньополітичного курсу. Застосовано історико-порівняльний та історико-системний методи, історичний аналіз. Наукова новизна статті полягає у продовженні широких дискусій у наукових колах стосовно питання формування концептуальних засад зовнішньополітичних концепцій США. Вперше в українській історіографії проаналізовано ідеологічну складову проголошеної доктрини Трумена та вдосконалено попередні висновки щодо причин її виникнення. Висновки. Доведено, що доктрина Трумена була спрямована на протиставлення ідеології двох світових способів життя, несумісних між собою. Підкреслено особливу роль ідеології і пропаганди у формуванні державної політики Сполучених Штатів періоду холодної війни. Ідеологічний аспект доктрини зумовив зміст оновленої зовнішньополітичної риторики Сполучених Штатів. Виявлено, що феномен американізму та ідея виняткової ідеології відіграли на європейському континенті ключову роль у боротьбі між двома способами життя: демократією і тоталітаризмом. Доведено, що саме доктрина Трумена заклала підґрунтя і привела до найбільшого ідеологічного успіху у питанні національної безпеки та зовнішньополітичної стратегії США другої половини ХХ ст.

Ключові слова: доктрина Трумена, зовнішня політика США, холодна війна, ідеологія.

The Problem Statement

The ideological formation of one's own image and the images of other countries is a natural process in the field of foreign policy of the United States. Firstly, the American leadership forms its own vision of subjects of international relations and policy towards them through the prism of images. Secondly, the US state system requires the approval of foreign policy decisions by the majority of the US population, presented at Congress, thereby forcing the country's leadership to introduce certain images into the public consciousness. The ideological image of another nation not only contributes to the self-identification of a particular nation, but also determines the direction of the foreign and domestic policy of its government. This aspect of the special role of ideology and propaganda in the state policy formation of the United States during the Cold War period was not the subject of a separate study by the Ukrainian scholars.

The Analysis of Sources and Recent Researches

The most convincing description of how ideologies functioned and function in the world's leading countries is provided by M. Minakov, the head of the Ukrainian research programme at the J. Kennan Institute. The professor states that modern political scholars do not include the ideological function of the state into the list of basic and necessary state functions. However, the researcher assures, in the majority of countries, ideological control over the beliefs of citizens was and is being used inconspicuously. M. Minakov provides examples of the states with different political systems: the United States, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, the Soviet Union, Iran and the post-Soviet countries, and Ukraine in particular (Minakov, 2020, p. 220). The research object of T. Hiyshchenko, the Ukrainian Americanist, Doctor of historical sciences, is the ideological component of the American foreign policy and the history of the international strategy of the United States of America in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. (Hiyshchenko, 2016). He calls Harry Truman “a power locomotive that ensured the practical embodiment of the concept of compassionate deterrence” (Hryshchenko, 2014, p. 141). The source base of the research is the multi-volume edition of the US State Department “Foreign Relations of the United States”. The analysis of these documents allows us to analyze the formation mechanism of the post-war foreign policy of the United States (FRUS, 1971). The research works of historians M. Holm (Holm, 2013) and М. Hogan (Hogan, 1998) are focused on the issue of the ideological justification of the renewed American foreign policy course. The Cold War memoirs are a valuable resource for studying the Truman Doctrine. The published memoirs of diplomats elucidate the position of the American and Soviet leadership regarding the new stage in international relations. There should be singled out the memoirs of Harry Truman (Truman, 1955 - 1956), the US Secretary of State in the administration of President Dean Acheson (Acheson, 1969) and the USSR Ambassador to the USA Mykola Novikov (Novikov, 1989).

The Purpose of the Article

In the article there has been elucidated the ideological component of the Truman declared doctrine and there have been supplemented the previous conclusions regarding the reasons for its emergence. It has been proven that it was the Truman doctrine that laid the foundation and led to the greatest ideological success in the issue of the national security and foreign policy strategy of the USA in the second half of the 20th century. It was the ideological aspect of the doctrine that determined the content of the renewed foreign policy rhetoric of the United States.

The Results of the Research

The promotion of two superpowers - the USSR and the USA - to the forefront of the post-war world politics led to their increased attention to each other. The prerequisites for the evolution of the image of the USSR in the United States were determined by the state of the Soviet-American relations, the economic and domestic political development of the United States, as well as the reception of their leadership and the ideological preferences of the American society. To a large extent, the most important normative elements that determine the content and direction of the belief system of people, including public figures who make political decisions, are provided by ideology. According to Professor L. Hubersky, ideology becomes a kind of “a flag of struggle” that reflects the interests of opposing classes - an ordered system of views and ideas in which a person's attitude to reality, another person, and himself are understood and evaluated (Hubers'kyy, 2016, p. 44). National or state interest is the main determining force of foreign policy activity. Undoubtedly, the concept of national interest has an ideological content and is imbued with value norms. In the categories of interests formation and in a foreign policy strategy formation that should implement these categories, the system of value orientations, attitudes, principles and beliefs of statesmen and how they recept the surrounding world and evaluate the place of their country among other countries that make up the world community are of great importance. According to L. Hubersky, the state ideology is the main dominant factor in the development of culture: regardless of a person's belonging to one or another social stratum, in the process of cultural creation, he usually adheres to the state ideology. In the developed countries of the world, the culture-creating process is mainly statist in nature. It is based on another interest - national interest (Hubers'kyy, 2016, p. 48). The phenomenon of Americanism plays an important role in the ideological design of Washington's foreign policy strategy. The idea of American exceptionalism and America's special mission in world history was to some extent used by all post-war US administrations as the most important component of the ideological justification of the foreign policy course. That is why, in his memoirs, Harry Truman called his message “a turning point in American foreign policy” (Truman, 1955 - 1956, p. 106). When American President Harry Truman addressed the US Congress with his famous keynote speech, he recited the basis of American foreign policy for several decades to come. According to historians and political scholars, the majority of aspects of the doctrine remain topical nowadays. The general idea of the Anglo-Saxon unity continued to be preserved in the US foreign policy rhetoric, but this time it was about the need to unite the entire Western world. The Truman doctrine declared the struggle of democracy against authoritarianism - against evil, against which democratic forces had to unite and act as a united front. In his speech, Truman mentioned the countries of Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania and Bulgaria), which were called the main victims of Stalin's totalitarianism. The American president called on the West to take certain steps towards the protection of democratic states. Thus, the doctrine was based on the idea of protection. A feature of H. Truman's keynote speech was the promotion of certain values that were supposed to unite the Western world. In addition to democracy and freedom, Christian values that touched the ethical side of European society were adopted. The Americans supported the idea of condemning the Holocaust and genocide.

The idea of an exclusive ideology and the struggle between two ways of life is analyzed in the research of Michael Holm, a historian at Boston University in the USA. The researcher interprets the postwar American foreign policy through the lens of the struggle for a way of life, national exceptionalism, and liberal political and economic ideals. In his opinion, Harry Truman sought to establish a unified world order based on the formation of the Western exclusive ideology in the struggle for the American way of life, democratic freedom against totalitarianism and repression. It was the Truman doctrine, the author believes, that laid the foundation and led to the formation of the greatest ideological success, turning European democracy into a managed and organized system in the American style. The ideology of the USA, the researcher is convinced, evolved the Western European continent beyond recognition as compared to any other period of history (Holm, 2013, pp. 204, 248). Thus, more than seven decades ago, the US government led by Harry Truman determined the main steps of the American foreign policy for many years to come. Of course, the Truman doctrine must be considered, first of all, in the context of the international circumstances that developed after the end of World War II. However, according to many researchers, the majority of the provisions of the Truman doctrine are still topical nowadays. There is an obvious continuity with the past. After all, even nowadays the USA defines itself as a world leader that popularizes its own values, principles and interests. Michael Hogan, a historian and editor of the magazine “The Diplomatic History”, analyzes the development of military institutions in the context of a fierce ideological dispute within the United States. The author reports on the formation of a new ideology of the national security. In his view, President Harry Truman was at the center of a fundamental struggle for the political identity of the nation and the postwar goals of the United States. It was his efforts that determined the size and shape of the state's national security, which emerged finally (Hogan, 1998). The President called Greece and Turkey the countries, which were under the communist threat. To eliminate this threat, they were allocated financial assistance from the United States in the amount of 400 million dollars. The message also stated that the USSR posed a threat to the United States. Attention was focused on the impossibility of a peaceful coexistence and cooperation of countries with different social systems. The Truman doctrine was based on the concept of containment of the USSR. The United States, led by Harry Truman, understood that if Greece and Turkey fell into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical advantage of the USSR would be ensured. In this case, strategically important the Black Sea straits - the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles - would come under Moscow's control. All this would pose a threat to the US national interests. Harry Truman declared that we “must help free peoples so that they can decide their own destiny” (Truman, 1947). The President understood that one of the means that could prevent the spread of the Soviet influence in the world is to replace the ideals of communism with the American way of life. In his speech, the President stated: “There are no perfect governments. One of the main virtues of democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and can be corrected through democratic processes... One of the main goals of the foreign policy of the United States is to create the necessary conditions in which we and other peoples of the world will be able to protect the way of life of people, free from any coercion... We must uphold free nations, their democratic institutions, and their national integrity against the aggressive intent of totalitarian regimes that undermine world peace through direct or indirect aggression, and thus, the security of the United States. Totalitarian regimes have recently been imposed on the peoples of many countries of the world against their will” (Truman, 1947). This meant that the US was offering its American standard of relations and governance. Harry Truman believed that the United States should be concerned about the lives of other countries only in order to help peoples under external threat in their struggle for a free way of life. It is necessary to note the economic aspect of the Truman doctrine. The USA was interested in the rapid economic recovery of post-war Europe. At the expense of economic partners in Europe, in the USA it would be possible to reduce unemployment, to increase its own exports, because it was necessary to restore the economies of leading European countries and integrate them into the international trade and financial system during a short period of time. Europe was important both as a potential source of labour and market for the sale of American products, and as a developed industrial center, the control of which could give Washington a great advantage over the USSR (Anistratenko, 2020). This presidential speech contained both Truman's personal views and reflected the circumstances in the context of the external factors influence. After the end of World War II such factors can be considered as the bipolar structure of the world, the presence of political and ideological confrontation between the superpowers, the USA's possession of atomic weapons, and the rapid spread of the ideas of communism and socialism. It should be noted that at the end of World War II, the USA reached a fundamentally new level of a military potential, as it became the only owner of nuclear weapons at that time, which were tested in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sol Landau, a senior researcher at the Institute for Political Studies of the United States stated that the realities of world politics, economics, and military power put the United States in a unique position after World War II. The postwar world undoubtedly provided the American leaders with the opportunity to shape it, the ideals of the United States won (Landau, 1988). The US Congress officially accepted Harry Truman's idea to provide financial and economic aid to Greece and Turkey on May 22, 1947. The majority of the provisions of the Truman doctrine correspond to the realities of the US modern foreign policy. The same as in the past the US is a world leader in opposing totalitarian regimes that limit freedom and democracy. The researcher M. J. Heale focused on the ideological issue of the policy of anti-communism in the USA during the period of Harry Truman's rule. The author traced and discovered the roots of anti-communism in the United States long before the Cold War. He notes that the “red panic”, which spread in American society at the end of the 1940s and at the beginning of the 1950s, was implemented by upper authorities and corresponded to the interests of various US political forces. And it was the representatives of Harry Truman's administration who participated in the formation of anti-communist propaganda actively. Having penetrated into all spheres of social and political life, anticommunism found its manifestation in political struggle, espionage scandals, a programme for checking the loyalty of civil servants, and show trials. The author wrote that anxietymongering contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of a global “red threat”, which corresponded to the White House's goal (Heale, 1990). Research works by Sh. J. Parry-Giles (Parry-Giles, 2002) and Т О. Windt (Windt, 1991) focus on the verbal expression of the confrontation between Washington and Moscow. The authors state that the creation of a new reality was the goal of the official rhetoric of the United States at the beginning of the Cold War, which researchers consider, primarily, as the war of words. According to the authors, language is not just a weapon, but a part of reality. The authors, having analyzed the rhetoric of the US administration during the first five post-war years, concluded that anti-communism became the official American ideology under Harry Truman. Historians believe that in the postwar rhetoric of the United States the turning point was the speech of the President before the joint meeting of both Houses of Congress on March 12, 1947. In their opinion, this event was the starting point for the formation of a new political reality in the USA and led to the further transformation of the ideological beliefs of the entire American society. After declaring the Truman Doctrine, according to the authors, the rhetoric of the “Cold War” finally came into its own (Windt, 1991; Parry-Giles, 2002). After all, in the White House, which was headed by Harry Truman, as early as in 1945, they were aware of the impossibility of continuing allied relations with Moscow. The doctrine of “containment” of communism, declared by John Kennan in February of 1946, became a conceptual expression of the sentiments that were observed in Washington. Assistance to Turkey and Greece became the reason for the open declaration of containment of the USSR (Windt, 1991). A researcher Robert Frazer names two key documents that launched the renewed US foreign policy. This is a speech in which the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed and George Kennan's article “The Sources of the Soviet Behavior” aimed at containing the Soviet Union. In his opinion, economic assistance to Greece and Turkey by the American government opened a new stage in the relations between these countries (Frazier, 2009, p. 4). Dennis Merrill, Professor of history at the University of Missouri, states that America was able to prevent Greece from slipping into a communist regime by adding it to its sphere of influence and increasing its influence in the region greatly. When the right-wing politicians resisted the reforms and tried to oust more centrist elements from the government, the United States forced them to stop their rhetoric. The US military advisers maintained and retrained the Greek National Army and developed the strategy for suppressing internal unrest. In some period of time the communist uprising was effectively suppressed and the Soviet Union no longer intervened in Greece or neighbouring Turkey after American military aid was sent to Ankara (Merrill, 2006). In the research work of Turkish historians, international relations Professors Dilek Barlas, Shuhnaz Yilmaz, and Serhat Guveng there are analyzed the relations between Great Britain, the United States, and Turkey in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean region at the beginning of the Cold War. Focusing on the period of the Truman Doctrine, the authors argue that the transition from the decline of the British influence to the hegemony of the United States was long and multi-layered. In this context, Turkey had to pass a difficult diplomatic path (Dilek Barlas, §uhnaz Yilmaz & Serhat Guveng, 2020, p. 641).

An expert in the field of the Cold War history Sh. J. Perry-Giles believes that without analyzing the rhetoric of Harry Truman's administration, it is impossible to understand the processes fully, which took place in the American society in 1945 - 1952. The author sees propaganda and psychological strategy as the key tools for understanding the actions of Harry Truman's administration during the Cold War. The researcher notes that the propaganda that served the state made it possible to create a monolithic ideology of the USA in the 20th century. In the opinion of the author, the cooperation of the White House with the American mass media became the key to the successful penetration of the necessary ideas into the

Congress and public opinion of the United States. As the author notes, Harry Truman's administration successfully created and used the so-called crisis rhetoric by inciting anxiety, campaigning for the fight against world communism, and fighting for the democratic choice of one's own way of life. American propaganda, which became a powerful weapon in the “Cold War”, fully reflected the processes taking place in the United States at that time (ParryGiles, 2002). The research work of the Ukrainian philosopher, Professor V Buhrov, is a national study of the category of a language in the context of problems of understanding (Buhrov, 1996).

It is worth noting that the Truman's doctrine was initially recepted with interest in the USSR. Moscow had high hopes for the American loans to rebuild the country. Stalin spoke about this many times. In April of 1947, at the meeting in Moscow with the American delegation, he expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the United States was refraining from providing a promised loan of 6 billion dollars. A participant at this meeting, N. Novikov, recalled that Stalin's harsh words shocked all the meeting participants, as it was known that the US government had not made such promises (Novikov, 1989, p. 382). At the same time, the Soviet leadership opposed the strengthening of the economic and political influence of the United States in Europe in every possible way. Ideology and real politics came into conflict with each other. Thoroughly Stalin vacillated between the desire to maintain cooperation with the allies and the readiness to enter a new period of confrontation. After all, Stalin considered the creation of the Soviet zone of influence to be the most important result of the difficult war. He was not going to make any concessions to the West in European countries. For the Soviet leadership of that time, the control over the European sphere of influence was important for both geopolitical and ideological reasons. When it became obvious to the leadership of the USSR that it was necessary to rely only on its own forces and look for internal reserves, all publications of the Soviet press began to boil down to the following accusations of the doctrine: its goal is the establishment of the economic dominance of the USA and Europe, penetration into the Soviet sphere of influence and isolation of the USSR (Anistratenko, 2020). Immediately historians of the USSR era began to focus their attention on the ideologizing of the renewed American foreign policy. The ideological nature of the American approach to foreign policy after World War II caused numerous discussions in the scientific and political circles of the USSR. In A. Kunina's research work it is emphasized that the ideological basis of the President Truman's course became an important component of the US state policy, and anti-communism was formed as an official policy (Kunina, 1973, p. 39). According to S. Apatov, the theme of the “Soviet threat” had the greatest weight in the ideological activity of the United States, in which the postulates of anti-communism, which became the basis of the ideology of the US foreign policy during the entire post-war period, found their concrete embodiment (Appatov, 1978, pp. 134-140). Undoubtedly, one of the results of the announcement and implementation of the Truman doctrine was the further aggravation of the Soviet-American relations. The policy of dividing Europe into spheres of influence was finally approved. The process of creating blocs by each side became a hallmark of the Cold War. The tension of the ideological atmosphere on the European continent was caused by both the USSR and the USA. Like the Soviet Union, initially the United States did not show much interest in the affairs of the Balkans during World War II. It was an area of the world which was considered peripheral to the US national interests. It was assumed that the British and the USSR would largely dominate the Balkan affairs and the US would stay out. Nevertheless, some far-sighted American politicians recognized that during the post-war period this view on the Balkan issue could completely change. That's what happened later. Soon, the Truman administration began to consider Greece as a front line in an effort to contain the spread of communism. Indeed, J. Iatrides notes that George Kennan's famous idea of “deterrence” was first implemented by the Truman administration in Greece (Iatrides, 2005, p. 142). In February of 1947, in the memorandum to the President Truman, the Secretary of State George Marshall wrote the following: “Crisis of extreme importance has arisen in Greece and to some extent in Turkey. This crisis has a direct and immediate relation to the security of the United States. The time has come for a new American policy on Greece. But first, the President must be convinced that the new political course will be appropriate. If Greece starts a civil war, it is likely that it will become a communist country under the control of the Soviet Union. Turkey will be surrounded and the Turkish situation, I am reporting on now, will, in turn, become even more critical. Thus, the Soviet domination can spread over the entire Middle East to the border of India. The impact of this on Hungary, Austria, Italy and France cannot be overestimated. No panic, but we can say that we are dealing with the first manifestation of the crisis that can spread the Soviet domination in Europe, the Middle East and Asia” (FRUS, 1971, Doc. 65). In fact, George Marshall said that the victory of communism in Greece would have worldwide consequences for the American security and the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Taking into consideration the fact that all of Greece's neighbouring countries were controlled by the communist regimes, it became very important for Greece to remain anticommunist as resistance to a complete communist takeover of the Balkans. The situation required a quick and energetic action. Soon, H. Truman formulated the directions of the American foreign policy aimed at creating conditions for freedom, fight totalitarianism in the post-war world, and ensure the development of free democratic states. It is under such conditions of the world order the American security will become a reality. Conal Chambers appeals the classic of the Cold War to John Lewis Gaddis, who stated that the Truman doctrine did not represent an absolute change in the American foreign policy. The author concludes that sometimes the policy, which was declared for a certan period to achieve its goal, can have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. And it was the concern about the Soviet domination and its subversive activities in Europe that greatly increased the desire of the Truman administration to come to the defense of the monarchical regime in Greece in its fight against the communist insurgency (Chambers, 2017). Denis Merrill, a researcher of the US foreign policy, is a supporter of this opinion. It was the President's administration concern about the domino effect of the communism that marked the emergence of modern US foreign policy (Merrill, 2006). Thus, both the USA and the USSR were guided by their own ideological and geopolitical motivations, and the plans and actions of these countries were part of their own foreign policy strategies. Signs of opposition between ideological and socio-political systems were demonstrated. Dualism of political sympathies and social attitudes was preserved both in Greece and Turkey. This contributed to the declaration of the Truman doctrine by the American administration in 1947. Greece is the only Balkan country, reported Dean Acheson, which, as well as earlier, is oriented towards Western democracies (FRUS, 1971). Dean Acheson, an American politician who served as the US Secretary of State in the administration of the President Harry Truman, said that the British were leaving everywhere and if we didn't come instead, the Russians would. He considered it an extremely difficult task to convince the Congress to allocate the necessary funding. D. Acheson noted that if there was no money, then the Middle East and France would become communist (Chace, 2007, p. 165). In order to pass legislation on aid to Greece and Turkey, the help of the Congress and the public opinion was necessary. In order to convince the Americans of the need for emergency aid, as the American diplomat recalls, the adviser on the USSR issues Loy Henderson, it was decided to present the Greek issue in an ideological context, declaring the communist threat to the free world. It was necessary to change the American public opinion, portraying the Soviet Union not as an ally, but as an enemy. Henderson found Winston Churchill's speech in Fulton town, which he had delivered a year earlier, to be useful in this regard (Henderson, 1973, pp. 81-84). Professor John Handley, Vice President of the American Diplomacy Publishers, in his review on the research by Larry Haas, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, agrees that the Truman administration achieved great results in the direction of foreign policy during the first years of his presidency. However, both researchers make it absolutely clear that no achievement would be possible without the support of the Republican Congress and Senator A. Vandenberg in particular. The authors assert that without the strong Republican support led by Arthur Vandenberg, the Truman administration would not have been able to pass any programme at the Congress (Handley, 2018). The Democratic administration of Harry Truman faced the difficult task of convincing the 80th Congress, with the predominance of the Republicans in both houses, to allocate funding to help Greece and Turkey. Dean Acheson presented the new US policy as a decisive struggle between good and evil and the salvation of free peoples from the communist aggression: “America has no choice: it must protect its security, it must protect the very freedom itself' (Acheson, 1969, pp. 165-166). On March 3, 1947, the Subcommittee on Foreign Policy Information of the Coordination Committee of the State Department recommended forming propaganda support for the aid programme to Greece and Turkey on the opposition of free peoples and totalitarian regimes, two ways of life - the first one based on the will of the majority with free institutions and guarantees of personal freedom; the second one - on the will of the minority, terror, oppression, control over the press and unfair elections imposed on the majority (FRUS, 1971). In the USA, a propaganda company was deployed in support of the Truman doctrine. According to a poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion in March of 1947, the majority of the Americans (56%) supported the aid bill. The number of the Americans who considered the USSR aggressive increased from 38% to 66% in 1945. At the end of 1947 the American community was firmly opposed to the Sovietization of Greece and Turkey (Gallup, 1972, p. 639). Thus, the international crisis concerning Greece and Turkey became an indisputable reason for substantiating the communism deterrence doctrine, which was nurtured in Washington for more than a year. The President used the state of affairs in Greece and Turkey to formulate the ideology of a renewed foreign policy that America would pursue in response to a threat that he considered serious. Harry Truman urged the Congress to extend economic aid to other nations in a dire need of it to maintain their territorial integrity and internal stability. The Truman doctrine was aimed at confronting the ideologies of two incompatible world ways of life. One is a democracy in which the majority rules with reliable political institutions established after free democratic elections and respect for civil liberties open to the outside world. The alternative was a country where a representative minority imposes its will on the majority, suppressing any attempts to express the will by means of violence and repression. H. Truman formed a binary model of the world and warned that if the future of Turkey and Greece became the state order of tyranny and violence, the entire region would be lost as a result. Therefore, he recommended that the Congress would adopt his policy to prevent such consequences.

Reflecting on the US foreign policy, the Russian doctor of historical sciences, professor V. Pechatnov claims that it is a multidimensional concept of the national security. The content of this concept evolves historically, but its constants are geopolitical and ideological components. The author emphasizes that the concept of “national security” is approved in the key US doctrinal documents as an integral complex task, the implementation of which is the main goal of the American foreign and military policy. The main opinion of V. Pechatnov is that the combination of geopolitical, economic and political factors is the basis for determining the foreign policy course of the United States. Describing the current US foreign policy strategy, the Russian Americanist states that it is aimed at filling the power vacuum created after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The historian analyzes American foreign policy during the Cold War and the present period of time. In his opinion, the only significant difference is that during the Cold War it was about Germany, Poland, and the Balkans, relatively distant from the Russian core, and noways the struggle is for Ukraine, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia, which largely explains the severity of the Russian reaction to the events in Georgia and Ukraine (Pechatnov, 2017, pp. 13-17). The Russian publicist O. Mosesov writes the following: “And whether the elements of the doctrine remained in the modern US foreign policy approach to European countries are best told by the facts: Greece and Turkey, which received aid in 1947, are still members of the NATO, and the rhetoric of the American establishment towards Russia and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe hardly changed” (Mosesov, 2017). Professor V. Zorin also believes that the policy of deterrence, which was proclaimed during the period of Truman's presidency, is still being continued by America. In his opinion, after the collapse of the USSR, the ideological component of the Cold War went into the past, but the geopolitical component did not disappear anywhere (Zorin, 2019). A researcher N. Nikolayeva analyzes the ideological contradictions of the two superpowers: “Ideology played a greater role in the relations between the two great powers than during the previous years. The withdrawal of the British troops from Turkey and Greece opened the way for the Communists to come to power. The situation in the Mediterranean could change radically. There was a threat of establishing the Soviet control over the Suez Canal. The American leadership could not allow this situation. Thus, the Truman doctrine was born as the result of reluctance to spread communism and the desire to maintain the American influence on the markets in the countries that received aid” (Nikolayeva, 2004). This opinion is supplemented by the statement of the current Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs S. Lavrov: “Ideology interfered in the relationship between the USA and the USSR. Because otherwise it is difficult to explain the Anglo-American slogan of “deterrence” of the Soviet Union - the strategy that involved not only blocking the “expansion of Moscow”, but also breaking the Soviet system itself as the ultimate goal of the Cold War” (Lavrov, 2006). It is worth noting that the modern Russian scientific elite does not deny and notes the harmfulness of excessive ideologization and expresses the opinion that one cannot be a hostage of ideology. As the history of the development of the Soviet-American relations has shown, excessive ideological indoctrination leads to confrontation. In the Soviet Union Harry Truman's justification of the need for active American influence in the affairs of Greece and Turkey was considered as evidence of the final rejection of the US policy of cooperation and its intention to assume the functions of a world leader (Tolstuhina, 2017). According to L. Hubersky, traditionally a leading ideological form is political, which is more often called political ideology. In this form of ideology, the structure of ideology in general and all other ideological forms - economic, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious, etc. - are the most clearly visible (Hubersky, 2016, p. 93). Political ideology as a leading ideological form is confirmed by the opinion of Professor V. Zorin that the Cold War was not just a conflict of two ideologies, but a geopolitical confrontation (Zorin, 2019). American researcher Elizabeth Spalding argues that for Harry Truman, at the end of World War II the United States was the only nation-state capable of shaping a new world policy. This policy was to protect the national security of America and its allies, support existing and potential liberal democratic governments, contain communist totalitarianism, and provide long-term prospects for lasting global peace. Harry Truman called the aid to Greece and Turkey an investment in world freedom and peace in the world, which would eliminate totalitarian regimes. After all, the basis of understanding the implementation of H. Truman's international policy lies in the difference between liberal democracy and communist totalitarianism. Thus, the doctrine publicly presented H. Truman's understanding of the Cold War and institutionalized the deterrence strategy (Spalding, 2017). The theses of the doctrine are viable enough and quite acceptable for American politicians today. This is evidenced by the words of Senator Tim Kaine: “We must strive to be an exemplary democracy in the world. Nowadays, world democracies need role models. Any democracy is always under influence and therefore always needs a champion, and we are the best suited to be that champion” (Kaine, 2017). Creating a theoretical and ideological basis for the post-war policy of the United States became the main task of the practical implementation of the Truman doctrine. The United States faced the task of developing specific tasks that would regulate the practical side of implementing the updated foreign policy course. “Ideology really has an overtly practical direction, because it is not only an expression of collective interest, but also of collective will. The laboratory of ideology is a real historical process” (Hubersky, 2016, pp. 74-75).