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Skillbook Chapter 14
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bay of Pigs | US supported invasion of Cuba in April 1961;intended to overthrow Communist dictator Fidel Castro, the operation proved a fiasco. Castro's forces killed 114 of the invaders and took nearly 1200 prisoners. Encouraged the SU to become more active in the US |
| Camp David Accords (1979) | Agreement reached between the leaders of Israel and Egypt after protracted negotiations brokered by President Carter; Israel surrendered land seized in earlier wars and Egypt recognized Israel as a nation. It did not lead to permanent peace in the region. |
| Chiang Kai Shek | Ineffective and corrupt leader of China in 1930s and 1940s; he was a wartime ally of the US. But was unable to stop communist from seizing power in 1949. Chiang's exile to Taiwan was a major American setback in the early days of the cold war. |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | A Confrontation between the US and the USSR resulting from a Soviet attempt to place long-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy forced the Soviets to remove them with a blockade and the threat of force. |
| Dien Bien Phu | French fortress in northern Vietnam that surrendered in 1954 to the Viet minh; the defeat caused the French to abandon Indochina and set the stage for the Geneva Conference, which divided the the region and led to American involvement in South Vietnam. |
| Domino Theory | Eisenhower's metaphor that when one country fell to communists, its neighbors would then be threatened and collapsed one after another like a row of dominoes; this belief became a major rationale for US intervention in Vietnam. |
| Douglas MacAuthur | WWII hero who led the United Nation forces during the Korean War. has outspoken opposition to President Truman's decisions to limit the war cost him his command. He wanted to bomb China, and Truman rejected the idea as too reckless |
| Dwight Eisenhower | WWII hero and president, 1953-1961; his internationalist foreign policy continued Truman's policy of containment but put greater emphasis on military cost cutting the threat of nuclear weapons to deter communist aggression, and CIA to stop communism |
| Fidel Castro | Communist leader of Cuba who led a rebellion against the US backed dictator and took power in 1959; president Kennedy tried to overthrow him with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 but failed Castro became closely allied with the SU. |
| George Kennan | State department official who was architect of the containment concept;in his article "the sources of Soviet conduct" he said the USSR was historically and ideologically driven to expand and that the US must practice vigilant containment to stop expansion |
| Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | an authorization by Congress empowering President Johnson to take all necessary measures to protect US forces in Vietnam; it was issued following reported attacks on US destroyers off the Vietnam coast. Congress later regretted this action. |
| Henry Kissinger | advisor to Presidents Nixon and Ford; he was architect of the Vietnam settlement, the diplomatic opening to China, and detente with the SU |
| HO Chi Minh | Communist leader of North Vietnam; he and his Viet Minh/ Viet Cong allies fought French and American forcers to a standstill in Vietnam, considered a nationalist by many others viewed him as an agent of the SU and China |
| Iran-Contra Affair | Scandal that erupted after the Reagan Admin sold weapons to Iran in hopes of freeing American hostages in Lebanon; Money from the arms sales was used to aid the Contras in Nicaragua, even though Congress had prohibited this assistance. |
| Iran Hostage Crisis | incident in which Iranian radicals, with government support, seized 52 Americans from the US embassy and held them for 444 days, demanding the return of the deposed Shah to stand trial the fundamentalist clerics behind the seizure. |
| Jimmy Carter | President 1977-1981; he aimed for a foreign policy as good and great as the American people. His highlight was the Camp David Accords his low point, the Iran Hostage Crisis. Defeated for reelection after one term, he became very successful expresident |
| John Foster Dulles | Eisenhower's secretary of State, moralistic in his belief that communism was evil and mist be confronted with brinkmanship and massice retaliation |
| Joseph Stalin | ruthless leader of SU from 1925-1953; he industrialized the nation and led it in WWII and the early stages of the Cold War |
| Lyndon Johnson | president, his escalation of the Vietnam War cost him political support and destroyed his presidency. He increased the number of US troops in Vietnam from 16000 in 1963 to 540000 in 1968. After the Tet Offensive, he decided to not seek reelection |
| Mao Zedong | Communist Chinese leader who won control of China in 1949; a wary ally of the SU, Mao was an implacable foe of the US until 1970s |
| Marshall Plan | Secretary of State George Marshall's economic aid program to rebuild war-torn Western Europe; it amounted to an enlarged version of the Truman Doctrine with billions of dollars going to revive European economies and contained |
| Ngo Dinh Diem | American Ally in south Vietnam from 1954-1963; his repressive regime caused the Communist Viet Cong to thrive in the South and required increasing American military aid to stop a Communist takeover. He was killed in a coup in 1963 |
| Nikita Khrushchev | Soviet Leader, 1954-1964, he was an aggressive revolutionary who hoped to spread communism into Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Blame for the Cuban Missile crisis eventually cost him his leadership position in the USSR. |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) | military alliance of the US, then Western European Countries, and Canada; it was considered a deterrent to Soviet aggression in Europe, with an attack on one NATO nation to be considered as an attack on all members. |
| Peaceful coexistence | period in Soviet-American relations marked by less tension and by personal diplomacy between Khrushchev and Eisenhower; the two leaders recognized that in a nuclear age, competition between their nations must be peaceful. ended by U2 incident |
| Richard Nixon | President; 1969-1974; he extracted the US from Vietnam slowly, recognized Communist China and improved relations with the SU. His foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate Scandal. |
| Tet Offensive | A series of Communist attacks on 44 South Vietnamese cities; although the Viet Cong suffered a major defeat, the attacks ended the American View that the war was winnable and destroyed the nation's will to escalate the war further |
| Truman Offensive | the announced policy of Truman to provide aid to free nations who faced internal or external threats of a communist takeover; announced in conjecture with a $400 million economic aid package to Greece and Turkey, it was successful in helping. |
| Yalta Conference | meeting of Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill to discuss postwar plans and Soviet entry into the war against Japan near the end of WWII; disagreements over the future of Poland surfaced. |
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