TGF 4: Great-Power Politics in Historical Perspective

Question 0

Hegemon

Answer 0

A single, overwhelmingly powerful state that exercises predominate influence over the global system.

Question 1

Long-cycle theory

Answer 1

A theory that focuses on the rise and fall of the leading global power as the central political process of the modern world system.

Question 2

Appeasement

Answer 2

A strategy of making concessions to another state in the hope that, satisfied, it will not make additional claims.

Question 3

Isolationism

Answer 3

A policy of withdrawing from active participation with other actors in world affairs and instead concentrating state efforts on managing internal affairs.

Question 4

Multipolar

Answer 4

An international system with more than two dominant power centers.

Question 5

Bipolar

Answer 5

An international system with two dominant power centers.

Question 6

Domino theory

Answer 6

A metaphor popular during the Cold War, which predicted that if one state fell to communism, it’s neighbors would also fall in a chain reaction, like a row of falling dominoes.

Question 7

Mirror images

Answer 7

The tendency of people in competitive interaction to perceive each other similarly - to see an adversary the same way as an adversary sees them.

Question 8

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Answer 8

The tendency for one’s expectations to evoke behavior that helps to make the expectations become true.

Question 9

Bandwagon

Answer 9

The tendency for weak states to seek alliance with the strongest power, regardless of that power’s ideology or firm of government, in order to increase security.

Question 10

Containment

Answer 10

A strategy to prevent another state from using force to expand its sphere of influence.

Question 11

Truman Doctrine

Answer 11

The declaration by President Harry S. Truman that U.S. foreign policy would use intervention to support peoples who allied with the United States against external subjugation.

Question 12

Peaceful coexistence

Answer 12

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 doctrine that war between capitalist and communist states is not inevitable and that interbloc cooperation could be peaceful.

Question 13

Détente

Answer 13

A strategy of relaxing tensions between adversaries to reduce the possibility of war.

Question 14

Reagan Doctrine

Answer 14

A pledge of U.S. backing for anticommunist insurgents who sought to overthrow Soviet-supported governments.

Question 15

Rapproachment

Answer 15

In diplomacy, a policy seeking to reestablish normal relations between enemies.

Question 16

Imperial overstretch

Answer 16

The historical tendency of hegemons to weaken themselves through costly foreign pursuits that drain their resources.