The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.”31 This became the intellectual underpinning of the Truman Doctrine—the president’s announcement, on March 12, 1947, that he was asking for $400 million in assistance to Greece and Turkey to help fight Communist subversion. The following year, Secretary of State George C. Marshall unveiled a $12 billion initiative to rebuild Europe—an act of both selfless generosity and cold strategic calculation that came to be known as the Marshall Plan. The Soviet Union tried to test the West by blockading West Berlin in 1948, but Truman rose to the challenge by dispatching the U.S. Air Force to deliver supplies to the beleaguered city for nearly a year. In April 1949, the United States and Canada joined with ten nations in Western Europe to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to resist Soviet aggression.