By 1947, the Cold War had begun: Churchill had warned of an iron curtain falling across Eastern Europe; Stalin, denouncing the West as imperialistic (a policy of extending your rule over foreign countries), had refused to join the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and American diplomat George Kennan had filed his famous Long Telegram from Moscow, warning Washington that an entente (a friendly understanding) with the narrow-minded USSR was impossible. President Truman, his popularity at an all-time low, remained quiet until March 2, when he presented the Truman Doctrine, the anti-communist declaration that defined the American policy for the next 40 years.

A cost-cutting, war-weary Republican Congress had been planning a return to normalcy, instead, the President urged a costly, global program to root out communism everywhere it surfaced. Truman launched his plan with a request for $400 million to fight communism in Turkey (which bordered the USSR) and Greece. This was because a month earlier, Britain had announced that it could no longer afford to fund the Greek government in its war against communist guerrillas. Stalin responded by reviving the Cometern, his world-wide network for revolution, under the new name Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) and by renewing an anti-American propaganda campaign. East and West now completely drifted apart.