Truman uses coercion to mean the use of force or political pressure to influence the policies of nations. Specifically, he means the attempts of totalitarian regimes or armed communist minorities to spread their governing systems to the “free peoples” of the world. Truman stresses the importance of economic aid in stopping political coercion.

Communism is an economic system rooted in the theories of Karl Marx, in which property and the means of production are communally owned. In the Truman Doctrine Speech, communism is only once directly mentioned, but communist, “totalitarian” regimes act as the ideological counterpart to the free democracies Truman insists America must support. Truman presents communism as forming from “human want and misery” (7), which is exploited by minority groups to enforce totalitarian regimes upon the majority.

Containment was a key strategy of American foreign policy during the Cold War. The idea was to prevent the spread of communism by containing its influence to areas where it already existed, stopping further expansion but avoiding open confrontation with already-existing communist systems. The Truman Doctrine speech presents the main method of containment as economic and financial aid to stabilize nations and ensure groups threatening the status quo did not gain large followings.