Shortly afterward, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, Britain’s former wartime prime minister Winston Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, partitioning the free West from the communist East. Churchill’s speech helped to popularize the idea of an impending long-term struggle between the United States and the Soviets. But not until March 1947, in a speech announcing what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, did the president officially embrace the Cold War as the foundation of American foreign policy and describe it as a worldwide struggle over the future of freedom.