A | B |
United Nations | world organization formed to prevent war |
iron curtain | division between Eastern and Western Europe during the Cold War |
containment | policy aimed at preventing the spread of communism |
Truman Doctrine | policy of giving aid to countries threatened by communism |
Marshall Plan | plan to give aid to European countries to help them recover from the war |
COld War | state of tension and mistrust between the US and the USSR after WWII |
NATO | military alliance including the US, Canada, and several countries in Western Europe |
Warsaw Pact | military alliance between the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe |
brinksmanship | willingness on the part of the superpower to go to the edge of war |
U2 incident | shooting down of a US spy plane and capture of its pilot by the Soviet Union |
Mao Zedong | communist leader who defeated the Nationalists and led the People's Republic of China |
Jiang Jieshi | Nationalist leader who set up a new government in Taiwan |
commune | large farm set up in China in which many families work the land and live together |
Red Guards | young Chinese students who carried out the Cultural Revolution |
Cultural Revolution | uprising in China between 1968 and 1976 that aimed to establish a society of peasants and workers in which all were equal |
38th parallel | line that separated North Korea and South Korea |
Douglas MacArthur | leader of the UN forces during the Korean War |
Ho Chi Minh | Vietnamese nationalist who drove the French out of Vietnam and who led North Vietnam |
domino theory | theory that nations were like a row of dominoes; if one fell to communism, the others would fall too |
Vietcong | communist rebels in South Vietnam who were supported by North Vietnam |
Ngo Dinh Diem | leader of the anticommunist governmentof South Vietnam |
Vietnamization | Nixon's plan for gradually withdrawing US troops from Vietnam and replacing them with South Vietnamese troops |
Khmer Rouge | communist rebels who set up a brutal government in Cambodia |
Third World | developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America |
nonaligned nations | countries that did not take sides with either the US or the USSR |
Fidel Castro | communist leader of Cuba |
Anastasio Somoza | Nicaraguan dictator |
Daniel Ortega | leader of Communist rebels in Nicaragua |
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi | pro Western ruler of Iran |
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini | Muslim leader who overthrew the Shah of Iran |
Nikita Khrushchev | leader of the USSR after Stalin |
destalinization | process of getting rid of Stalin's memory |
Leonid Brezhnev | Soviet leader after Khrushchev |
John F. Kennedy | President of the US from 1961 to 1963 |
Lyndon Johnson | President of the US from 1963 to 1969 |
detente | policy to decrease tensions between the superpowers |
Richard M. Nixon | President of the US from 1969-1974 |
SALT | talks to limit nuclear arms in the US and USSR |
Ronald Reagan | President of the US from 1981-1989 |
Star Wars | program to protect America against enemy missiles |