ABSTRACT
After the conclusion of World War II, the Truman administration faced the difficult task of planning the future direction of American foreign policy. American policy planners came to believe that through the correct and effective application of a sophisticated and deliberate psychological warfare effort it would be possible to neutralize Soviet power, exploit Moscow's vulnerabilities, and hence win the cold war. The distinctive features of the cold war, particularly the absence of full-scale military hostilities between the US and the USSR, created the need for a somewhat different approach to the conduct of foreign policy. One of the primary weapons American strategists planned to use in the counteroffensive against the Soviet Union was psychological warfare. Although the issue of coordination and control of the American psychological warfare effort remained unresolved, top policy planners pushed ahead with refinements of a global strategy for its application.
