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b'On March 5, 1946\\u201475 years ago\\u2014Winston Churchill delivered the \\u201cSinews of Peace\\u201d at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The terms \\u201cspecial relationship\\u201d to describe US-UK relations and \\u201cIron Curtain\\u201d both become household terms after the speech, and some, particularly Russian historians, point to this moment as the official start to the Cold War.\\n\\nAt the time, Churchill was serving as leader of the opposition in Parliament after losing the UK general election in 1945. The world was recovering from the Second World War and ready for peace. Many in the United States and elsewhere were optimistic about future relations with the Soviet Union, an American and British ally just a few months before, and the possible peace that might come from the United Nations, whose Security Council started its first session in London in January 1946. Yet the former and future prime minister delivered a startling message to Americans who were largely unprepared to countenance the prospect of a looming, decades-long conflict against communism after winning the war against fascism. Though the American public was not ready for Churchill\\u2019s message, at least some in the US government were. \\u201cThe Sources of Soviet Conduct\\u201d (or \\u201cThe Long Telegram\\u201d) by George F. Kennan, the deputy chief of mission of the United States to the Soviet Union, arrived secretly to the State Department in Washington, DC, in February 1946. In July 1947 under the pseudonym \\u201cMr. X,\\u201d Foreign Affairs published this memo describing the need to contain the USSR.\\n\\nMany Americans disliked and criticized the speech. For instance, Christianity and Crisis editor and founder Reinhold Niebuhr called it \\u201cill-timed and ill-advised\\u201d in the only reference his journal made to it in 1946. He and others in the publication were discussing the possibility of US-USSR cooperation or alliance, and how the new United Nations might benefit global order with \\u201cworld government.\\u201d Niebuhr blamed Churchill for unwisely heightening tensions and undermining a \\u201ccreative solution\\u201d to the \\u201catomic bomb problem.\\u201d Yet Churchill better understood what the Soviets had already done in Eastern Europe. The problem was not the speech, but the Soviet actions the speech exposed. While many Americans dreamed of an alliance with Moscow and \\u201cUncle Joe\\u201d (the friendly image of Joseph Stalin in Western media), they forgot that the Soviet Union had a vote on whether they wanted to be an ally or adversary.\\n\\nIn this episode of the Foreign Policy ProvCast, Joseph Loconte and Mark Melton discuss the \\u201cSinews of Peace,\\u201d the post-World War II situation in Eastern Europe, why the American public and media disliked Churchill\\u2019s message, what President Harry Truman knew about the speech beforehand, whether or not the future special relationship between the US and UK was obvious in March 1946, and the speech\\u2019s legacy.\\n\\nLoconte also co-wrote an article with Nile Gardiner about the \\u201cSinews of Peace\\u201d for National Review, which can be read here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/churchills-prophetic-warning-an-iron-curtain-has-descended/'