ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a healthy democracy,

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government with a balanced diet.

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First up, the excerpt.

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I want you! I want you!

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Okay, and the question.

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The excerpt reflects which of the following conceptual shifts

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in American foreign policy?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right.

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What kind of "conceptual shift"

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does the excerpt describe?

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Well, we see that Truman says the U.S. must

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"supervise the use of funds made available to Greece"

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and make sure that foreign aid will

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"help to build an economy in which a healthy democracy

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can flourish." Got it?

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So, basically, Truman wanted to make sure we got the right

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ideological bang for our buck.

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So let's see which answer best describes

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Truman's new POV, or point of view.

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Was the conceptual shift in American foreign policy

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A - assuming a greater role in providing aid to all countries

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involved in World War II?

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Well, all the countries in World War II? Are you kidding?

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Americans are generous but not that generous.

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The aid Truman describes was only made available to Greece and Turkey,

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so either American diplomats had a thing for Mediterranean food -

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it's actually awesome - or something else was going on.

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That knocks out A. Was the change in foreign policy

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C - insisting that aid recipients be self-supporting?

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Hmm? Well, Truman and his advisors certainly hoped

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these countries would eventually be self-supporting,

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but that condition was never a motivating force for the aid.

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More like a nice-to-have situation. Cross out C.

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All right. Could the shift in foreign policy have been D -

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focusing almost exclusively on Western European nations? Huh.

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Well, take a look at Europe right here. See Greece? Yeah.

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It's always been on the edge here.

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We're in Southern, maybe even Eastern Europe,

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not Western Europe. Definitely off that map. So cross out D.

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That means the conceptual shift in American foreign policy was

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B - adopting a strategy of containment

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for countries susceptible to that evil disease, communism.

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Well, that's right. It was the spread of communism,

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not Mediterranean food, unfortunately,

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that had diplomats all aflutter.

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At the end of World War II, American politicians were worried

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that the Soviet Union (Russia)

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would persuade other countries to align with the Soviet Bloc

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so the U.S. offered carrots in the form of cash money to keep people on our side.

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So B is the correct answer.

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This foreign aid, though, came with lots of restrictions, including

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how the economy and governments could conduct their business.

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So much for those gifts that have no strings attached. Yeah.

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[ scissors snip ]

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