What do flying, laser vision, telekinesis, and the U.S. of A all have in common?

Easy—they're all superpowers.

Like Spider-Man's Uncle Ben once famously said, "with great power comes great responsibility." And not only is Uncle Ben's mantra a good general rule to live by, but it's also a driving force behind a major piece of American foreign policy known as the Truman Doctrine.

In 1947, President Harry Truman went before a joint session of Congress (which means that both the Senate and the House of Representatives were there) to give a speech that pretty much no one else at that time had the guts to give. According to Truman and his advisors Dean Acheson, Clark Clifford, and George Elsey, it was the responsibility of a great nation like the United States to support and defend democratic countries resisting subjugation by non-democratic foreign or internal aggressors.

In other words, if a country that believed in democracy were to be invaded by another country or threatened by a group that believed in something other than democracy (oh, say communism, for example), the U.S. would step in to help that country's fight against the non-democratic bully.

So yeah, with great power like the power the U.S. held in 1947 after the allied victory in World War II, came great responsibility. 

At first glance, the TD reads like a superhero coming to the rescue of a helpless country/damsel in distress while a super villain tries to take over the world. And actually, the real plot of this story isn't that far off: Truman's speech is a direct response to a series of communist-supported takeovers in struggling countries like Greece and Turkey. It's also a response to a series of aggressive political moves taken by the Soviet Union in an attempt to spread communism around the world (cue evil laugh).

However, the effects of Truman and his doctrine reach far beyond 1947. Turns out, the TD is one of the defining pieces of Cold War foreign policy in the twentieth century, and has significant ties to both the Korean and the Vietnam War. (Plus, the idea of the U.S. sending aid to democracies-in-training, such as those in the Middle East, is still a hot topic in Washington today.)

By 1947, everything about the Cold War was "super": super bombs, super spies, and what a foreign policy professor described as "super powers"—countries like the United States and the Soviet Union who could make political decisions that would have a truly global impact—dominated both governments' and peoples' ways of thinking.

Behind the jargon, underneath the political mask, the Truman Doctrine is just your friendly neighborhood foreign policy statement looking to define the place and role of the United States in a new, global "super" era.

Why should you care about a speech given by a guy whose middle name was just "S"? (Seriously—dude's middle initial doesn't stand for anything. It's just an "S.")

It's a fair question.

Turns out, as is the case with a lot of things we tend to not care about but really should—you know, like eating our vegetables or showing some restraint on how many episodes of Dr. Who we can watch in one sitting—the Truman Doctrine is good for your intellectual health/understanding of the world you live in today.

As a declarative statement of foreign policy, the TD established a precedent in which the U.S. would be obligated to send military or economic aid to countries fighting for a democratic government. Think of a mama bear promising to protect her democratic cubs and mark her territory against a shotgun-wielding park ranger named the Soviet Union.

Any time those cubs have been in trouble, or presumed to be in trouble, the U.S. has stepped in to offer protection and keep its Truman-authored political promise. This is what happened with both Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s/'70s, when both countries split between "pro-democratic" and "pro-communist" forces.

And today, strained relations with North Korea as well as the controversial legacy of Vietnam are still as much a part of our daily political conversations as Kanye running for president.

The TD has also had a more recent impact on U.S. foreign relations. From NATO's occupying Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks to the current debate on how involved the U.S. should become in countries like Syria after the Arab Spring Revolts of 2011, the idea of aiding democratic countries around the world as a way to oppose non-democratic regimes is still a popular foreign policy and political strategy.

So, whether you agree with the tumultuous history of American foreign policy in the Cold War or not, there really is no policy (or "A" on your Cold War History Test, for that matter) without the Truman Doctrine.