25/26 Flashcards
United Nations
An international body agreed upon at the Yalta Conference, and founded at a conference in San Francisco in 1945, consisting of a General Assembly, in which all nations are represented, and a Security Council of the five major Allied powers - the United States, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union - and seven other nations elected on a rotating basis.
Containment
The basic U.S. policy of the Cold War, which sought to contain communism within its existing geographic boundaries. Initially, containment focused on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but in the 1950s it came to include China, North Korea, and other parts of the developing world.
Truman doctrine
President Harry S. Truman’s commitment to
“support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” First applied to Greece and Turkey in 1947, it became the justification for U.S. intervention into several countries during the Cold War.
Marshall plan
Aid program begun in 1948 to help European economies recover from World War II.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Military alliance formed in 1949 among the United States, Canada, and Western European nations to counter any possible Soviet threat.
Warsaw Pact
A military alliance established in Eastern Europe in 1955 to counter the NATO alliance; it included Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.
Loyalty-Security Program
A program created in 1947 by President Truman that permitted officials to investigate any employee of the federal government for “subversive” activities.
House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC)
Congressional committee especially prominent during the early years of the Cold War that investigated Americans who might be disloyal to the government or might have associated with communists or other radicals.
Bretton Woods
An international conference in New Hampshire in July 1944 that established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
military-industrial complex
A term President Eisenhower used to refer to the military establishment and defense contractors who, he warned, exercised undue influence over the national government.
The Other America
A 1962 book by left-wing social critic Michael Harrington, chronicling “the economic underworld of American life.” His study made it clear that in economic terms the bottom class remained far behind.
baby boom
The surge in the American birthrate between 1945 and 1965, which peaked in 1957 with 4.3 million births.
National Interstate and Defense Highways Act
A 1956 law authorizing the construction of a national highway system.
NSC-68
Top secret government report of April 1950 warning that national survival in the face of Soviet communism required a massive military buildup.
Domino Theory
President Eisenhower’s theory of containment, which warned that the fall of a non-Communist government to communism in Southeast Asia would trigger the spread of communism to neighboring countries.
