ight to Iranian oil and
control of the Dardanelles as any other power" (37). LaFeber
points out that the West had a strong economic interest in access
to Iranian oil on favorable terms. This formulation by no means
demonstrates that the West would have been well advised to let
Stalin proceed unopposed in those areas, as Lafeber suggests.
He points out that the Truman administration, in order to gain
congressional and public support for aid to Greece and Turkey and
for the Marshall Plan, called for "a global battle against
communism" (53) and that such overblown rhetoric had unfortunate
domestic consequences (McCarthyism). This does not lea
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