What if the Greek Civil War had gone the same way as the Chinese Civil War/Korean War?
It might be useful to consider the new Truman principle as applied to Greece—if that civil war had turned out the way China’s did. In this supposition, General Markos’ Greek Reds sweep the mainland. The anti-Communist Greek leader, an unpopular but steadfast fellow called Apericles, retires with an army of several hundred thousand to the island of Crete. The Greek Reds, instead of going after Apericles, attack Turkey. The U.S. and the U.N. go to Turkey’s aid. The war gets difficult and General Legion, the American commander of the U.N. forces in Turkey, proposes to blockade Piraeus, the port of Athens, and to help General Apericles establish a beachhead on the mainland and hit the flank of the Greek Reds.
Under the Truman principle, General Legion should be fired for trying to widen or spread the war. It would be moral for American boys to die on the brown hills of Anatolia but immoral to help anti-Communist Greeks fight the same enemy on the brown plain of Thrace.
TIME, 23 April 1951