history test Flashcards
(21 cards)
What is the United Nations?
An international peacekeeping organization founded in 1945 to provide security to the nations of the world.
What does the term Iron Curtain refer to?
The boundary separating the Communist Nations of Eastern Europe from the mostly democratic nations of Western Europe during the Cold War.
Define Containment in the context of US foreign policy.
A US foreign policy adopted by President Truman in the late 1940s to stop the spread of Communism by creating alliances and helping weak countries resist Soviet advances.
What was the Truman Doctrine?
A US policy announced by President Harry Truman in 1947 of giving economic and military aid to free Nations threatened by internal or external opponents.
What was the purpose of the Marshall Plan?
A US program of economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after World War II.
What is the Cold War?
The state of diplomatic hostility between the US and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II.
What does NATO stand for?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
What is the Warsaw Pact?
A military Alliance formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European countries.
Define Brinkmanship.
A policy of threatening to go to war in response to any enemy aggression.
What were considered third world countries during the Cold War?
The developing nations not allied with either the United States or the Soviet Union.
What are non-aligned Nations?
Independent countries that remained neutral in the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.
What does Detente refer to?
A policy of reducing Cold War tension adopted by the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
What were the Salt talks?
Strategic arms limitation talks, a series of meetings in 1970 in which US and Soviet leaders agreed to limit their nations’ stock of nuclear weapons.
What is the Politburo?
The ruling Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
What is Glasnost?
A Soviet policy of openness to the free flow of ideas and information introduced in 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Define Perestroika.
A restructuring of the Soviet economy to permit more local decision making, begun by Mikhail Gorbachev.
What does CIS stand for?
Commonwealth of Independent States.
What is Shock therapy?
An economic program implemented in Russia by Boris Yeltsin in 1990 involving an abrupt shift from a command economy to a free market economy.
What was Solidarity?
A Polish labor union that became the main force of opposition to Communist rule in the 1980s.
What does reunification refer to?
The bringing together again of things that have been separated, such as the reuniting of East Germany and West Germany.
Define ethnic cleansing.
A policy of murder and other acts of brutality by which Serbs hoped to eliminate Bosnia’s Muslim population after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
