<P> Meanwhile, in March 1947, Truman appeared before Congress to request funding for the Truman Doctrine to fight Communism in Greece . "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures ." </P> <P> Unlike the "long telegram", Kennan's well - timed article appearing in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs with the pseudonym "X", entitled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", did not begin by emphasizing "traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity"; instead it asserted that Stalin's policy was shaped by a combination of Marxist--Leninist ideology, which advocated revolution to defeat the capitalist forces in the outside world and Stalin's determination to use the notion of "capitalist encirclement" in order to legitimize his regimentation of Soviet society so that he could consolidate his political power . Kennan argued that Stalin would not (and moreover could not) moderate the supposed Soviet determination to overthrow Western governments . Thus, </P> <P> the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long - term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies...Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence . </P> <P> His new policy of containment declared that Soviet pressure had to "be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points". The goal of his policy was to withdraw all the U.S. forces from Europe . "The settlement reached would give the Kremlin sufficient reassurance against the establishment of regimes in Eastern Europe hostile to the Soviet Union, tempering the degree of control over that area that the Soviet leaders felt it necessary to exercise". </P>

As the leading actor in the us foreign policy the president is known as