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The stunned legislators agreed to endorse the program on the condition that President Truman stress the severity of the crisis in an address to Congress and in a radio broadcast to the American people.Īddressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Acheson concluded that not since the days of Rome and Carthage had such a polarization of power existed. In a meeting between Congressmen and State Department officials, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson articulated what would later become known as the "domino theory." He stated that more was at stake than Greece and Turkey, for if those two key states should fall, communism would likely spread south to Iran and as far east as India. When Britain announced that it would withdraw aid to Greece and Turkey, the responsibility was passed on to the United States. The United States had also been following events in Turkey, where a weak government faced Soviet pressure to share control of the strategic Dardanelle Straits. American policymakers had been monitoring Greece's crumbling economic and political conditions, especially the rise of the Communist-led insurgency known as the National Liberation Front, or the EAM/ELAS. State Department officials that Great Britain could no longer provide financial aid to the governments of Greece and Turkey. On Friday, February 21, 1947, the British Embassy informed the U.S.