Harry Truman, experiencing a precipitous decline in public approval, was confronted by the spectre of an expanding Soviet Union in 1947. Greece was on the verge of falling to communist insurgents, and the British had announced they could no longer afford to prop up the existing friendly government. Truman and his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, summoned Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations to the White House to tell him that Congress would have to pay for a covert war against communist aggression in Europe. Truman made an address to a joint session of Congress in which he announced his policy of supporting free peoples against "armed minorities or outside pressures", a phrase clearly meant for Generalissimo Joseph Stalin. The Truman Doctrine was born and the Cold War began in earnest. Millions flowed to Greece along with military hardware and spies.
Arthur Vandenberg's nephew, Air Force General Hoyt Vandenberg, in charge of a nascent CIA, told a handful of Congress members in secret that the nation faced foreign threats as never before. "The oceans have shrunk, until today both Europe and Asia border the Untied States almost as do Canada and Mexico," he said[1]. The Charlatan, a former Air Force officer, repeated this phrase after the attack on September 11, 2001. And so the Second Cold War began in earnest. Millions flowed to obscure foreign nations along with military hardware and spies.
[1] Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner, 2007