Chapter 18 Flashcards
Foreign Policy
Definition: Policy that involves choice taking about relations with the rest of the world.
Connection: There is alotof controversy in our country about foreign policy and the issues that arise from it.
United Nations
Definition: Created in 1945 and currently including 193 member nations, with a central peacekeeping mission and programs in areas including economic development and health, education, and welfare.
Connection: There have been a lot of problems with the UN and foreign policy concering our country.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
A regional organization that was creates in 1949 by nations including the United States, Canada, and most Western European nations for mutual defense and has subsequently been expanded.
Connection: With the Cold War, the role of NATO changed dramatically.
European Union
A transnational government composed of most European nations that coordinates monetary, trade, immigration, adn labor policies, making its members one economic unit.
Connection: Regional organizations can have economic as well as military and political funstions.
Secretary of State
The head of the Department of State and traditionally the key adviser to the president on foreign policy.
Connection: Diplomacy is becoming a dangerous profession now.
Secretary of Defense
The head of the Department of Defense and the president’s key adviser on military policy and, as such, a key foreign policy actor.
Connection: Manages a budget larger than the entire budget of most nations.
National Security Council
Definition: the President’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials.
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Definiton: A group that consists of the commanding officers of each of the armed services, a chairperson, and a vice chairperson, and advises the president on military policy.
Connection: American military leaders are sometimes portrayed as aggressive hawks in policymaking.
Central Intelligence Agency
Definition: An agency created after World War II to coordinate American intelligence activities abroad and to collect, analyze, and evaluate intelligence.
Connection: Governments resort to intelligence agencies to obtain and interpret information that is needed to make good decisions.
Isolationism
The foreign policy course the United States followed throughout most of its history whereby it tried to stay our of other nation’s conflicts, particularly European wars.
Connection: There have been many times during our country’s history where isolationism can be seen and the actions have been questioned.
Containment Doctrine
Definiton: A foreign policy strategy advocated by George Kennan that called for the United States to isolate the Soviet Union, “contain” its advances, and resist its encroachments by peaceful means if possible but by forace if necessary.
Cold War
Definition: The hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union, which often brought them to the brink of war and which spanned the period from the end of World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist regimes in 1989 and the years following.
Connection: The Unites States was to be prepared to use nuclear weapons in order to deter the Soviet Union and communist China from taking aggressive actions.
Arms race
Definition: A tense relationship beginning in the 1950s between the Soviet Union and the United States whereby one side’s weaponry became the other side’s goad to produce more weaponry, and so on.
Connection: The result of this was a point of mutual assured destruction.
Detente
Definition: A policy, beginning in the early 1970s, that sought a relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, couples with firm quarentees of mutual security.
Connection: One major initiative from this was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
Interdependency
Definition: Mutual reliance, as in the economic realm, in which actions in nations reverberate and affect the economic well-being of people in other nations.
Connection: The health of the American economy depends on the prosperity of its trading partners and the smooth flow of trade and finance across the borders.
