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ss cold war
cold war vocab
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cold War | the ideological conflict between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the second half of the 20th century |
| Iron Curtain | name given to the line that separated Western (free) Europe and Soviet controlled communist East Europe |
| superpower | an extremely powerful nation |
| communism | a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably |
| Domino Theory | a theory that if one nation becomes Communist-controlled the neighboring nations will also become Communist-controlled |
| satellite nation | a country that is dominated politically and economically by another nation |
| Sphere of Influence | an area not within its own borders where the interest of one large nation are considered to be supreme |
| Berlin Airlift | a 327-day operation in which US and British planes flew food and supplies into West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded the city in 1948 |
| containment | the blocking of another nation's influence, especially the efforts of the United States to block the spread of Soviet influence during the late 1940s and early 1950s |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | a defensive military alliance formed in 1949 by ten Western European countries, the United States, and Canada |
| ballistic missile | a rocket-powered object, often carrying a nuclear warhead, which is shot into the air and hits its ground target after a free fall |
| collective security | a system of maintaining world peace and security by concerted action on the part of the nations of the world |
| Blacklist | a list of about 500 actors, writers, producers, and directors who were not allowed to work on Hollywood films because of their alleged Communist connections |
| subversives | people who work secretly inside a country to overthrow the government |
| United Nations | an international peacekeeping organization to which most nations in the world belong, founded in 1945 to promote world peace, security, and economic development |
| stalemate | a drawn contest; deadlock |
| Limited War | President Truman's plan to keep the Korean War on the Korean Peninsula, rather than enlarging it by attacking China or using nuclear weapons |
| brinkmanship | the practice of threatening an enemy with massive military retaliation for any aggression |
| Berlin Wall | a concrete wall that separated East Berlin and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, built by the Communist East German government to prevent its citizens from fleeing to the West |
| hotline | a communication link established in 1963 to allow the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union to contact each other in times of crisis |
| peaceful coexistence | competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations |
| Detente | the flexible policy, involving a willingness to negotiate and an easing of tensions that was adopted by President Richard Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger in their dealings with communist nations |
| Glastnost | the open discussion of social problems that was permitted in the Soviet Union in the 1980s |
| SALT 1 Treaty | a five-year agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, signed in 1972 that limited the nations' numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles |