Cold War Identifications/Definitions
1. United Nations 809
The United Nations is an international organization
founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51
countries committed to maintaining international peace
and security, developing friendly relations among nations
and promoting social progress, better living standards
and human rights. The U.N. contains two significant
chambers: the Security Council and the General
Assembly. The Security Council is composed of 15
Members, five permanent members: China, France,
Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, and ten non-permanent members elected for
two-year terms by the General Assembly (with end of
term date):
Angola (2016)
Chad (2015)
Chile (2015)
Jordan (2015)
Lithuania (2015)
Malaysia (2016)
New Zealand (2016)
Nigeria (2015)
Spain (2016)
Venezuela (2016)
The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of
the UN and is composed of representatives of all
Member States.
2. Containment 811
Containment was a United States policy to prevent the
spread of communism abroad during the Cold War, this
policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet
Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe,
China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. It represented a
middle-ground position between appeasement and
rollback. Most Eastern European countries became
satellite states of the Soviet Union immediately after
WWII. The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946
cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan. Kennan
proposed that possible Soviet expansion beyond its
current sphere of influence should be blocked by
providing firm but not aggressive military, diplomatic,
and economic assistance to those countries threatened
by communism.
3. Iron Curtain
On March 5, 1946, in the small Missouri town of Fulton,
Winston Churchill gave his now famous "Iron Curtain" speech
to a crowd of 40,000. Churchill made one of his most famous
post-war speeches when he gave the very descriptive phrase
that surprised the United States and Britain, "From Stettin in
the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has
descended across the Continent." The speech recognized the
division of Europe into Eastern Communist-led Europe and the
non-communist West.
4. Truman Doctrine 812
The Truman Doctrine was an international relations
policy set forth by President Truman in a speech on
March 12, 1947, which stated that the U.S. would support
Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to
prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere.
Historians often consider it as the start of the Cold War,
and the start of the containment policy to stop Soviet
expansion. The Eisenhower Doctrine applied
containment to the Middle East.
5. Marshall Plan 812
The U.S. attempted to prevent the spread of communism
in Europe by establishing policies of economic aid for
European nations. The Marshall Plan (officially the
European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American
initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave
economic support to help rebuild European economies
after the end of World War II in order to prevent the
spread of Soviet Communism.
6. Berlin blockade/Berlin airlift 813
The Berlin blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was
one of the first major international crises of the Cold
War. During the multinational occupation of post–World
War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western
Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of
Berlin under allied control. Their aim was to force the
western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start
supplying Berlin with food, fuel, and aid, thereby giving
the Soviets practical control over the entire city.
In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift
to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin.
7. NATO 814
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization constitutes a
system of collective defense whereby its member states
agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any
external party. It is the main alliance formed by the U.S.
with western Europe under the containment policy.
NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium. The Treaty
of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance,[1]
more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a
mutual defense treaty between eight communist States
of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the
Cold War. The founding treaty was established under the
initiative of the Soviet Union and signed on 14 May 1955,
in Warsaw. NATO and the Warsaw Pact established a
“balance of power” between the communist and noncommunist superpowers during the Cold War.
8. Chiang Kai-Shek 815-816
Leader of the Nationalist Chinese who fought against
communist takeover in China during the Chinese
Communist Revolution (1948-49); received extensive
military and economic assistance from the U.S.
9. Mao Zedong 816
Leader of the Chinese Communists during the Chinese
Communist Revolution (1948-49); relied heavily on aid
from the Soviet Union; remained in power until his death
in 1976.
10.
Taiwan 816
Island off the eastern coast of China where the
Nationalists fled after the Communists took control of
mainland China.
11.
Korean War (be ready to present in class)
12.
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century (1955–1972) competition
between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the
United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability.
The technological superiority required for such supremacy
was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of
ideological superiority. The Space Race spawned pioneering
efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned probes of the
Moon, Venus and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth
orbit and to the Moon. It began when the Soviet Union won
the first "lap" with the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik 1.
The Race reached its zenith with the July 20, 1969 US landing
of the first humans on the Moon on Apollo 11, and concluded
in a period of détente (partial easing of strained relations)
with the April 1972 agreement on a co-operative Apollo-Soyuz
Test Project, which resulted in the July 1975 meeting in Earth
orbit of a US astronaut crew with a Soviet cosmonaut crew.
The U.S. government responded to the surprise launching of
the first satellites into orbit around the earth when Congress
created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) to build missiles and explore space.
Miscellaneous Test Notes
Like Wilson, Truman believed the best way to avoid another
world war was to create a new world order in which all
nations had the right to self-determination. Like FDR, Truman
believed government should play an active role in the
economy in order to prevent depressions. His ambitious
reform program was the Fair Deal providing for health
insurance, federal aid-to-education, civil rights legislation,
funds for public housing and a new farm program.
A communist economy relies on government agencies
involved in production planning.
Most Eastern European countries immediately after World
War II became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
In the Soviet Union, a negative aspect of the Cold War Era was
the high cost of maintaining the arms race.
Attempts by the Soviet Union to strengthen communist
control in Eastern Europe occurred when it used the Warsaw
Pact to invade Czechoslovakia in 1948 and 1968, Budapest,
Romania in 1956 and when it built the Berlin Wall in 1961.
During the Cold War Era, many Asian and African nations
followed a policy of nonalignment because they wished to
receive aid from the Soviet Union and the United States.
The conflict between Israel and the Arab nations since 1948
was often considered part of the Cold War primarily because
the United States supported Israel and the Soviet Union
supported several Arab nations.
In his farewell message to the American public, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the growth of the "militaryindustrial complex," the dangerous influence of defense
contractors on Congress.