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Ch.29
Term | Definition |
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Nuremberg trials | Trials In which an Allied military tribunal tried several dozen top Nazi and military officials; many were executed for war crimes |
Cold War | An Era of high tension and bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II |
Iron curtain | Term coined by Winston Churchill in 1946 to describe an imaginary line dividing Communist countries in the Soviet bloc from countries in the western Europe during the Cold War |
Truman Doctrine | President Truman's pledge to provide economic and military aid to countries threatened by communism |
Marshall Plan | Plan for economic reconstruction of Europe after World War II |
Containment | The United states policy adopted in the 1940's to stop the spread of communism by providing economic and military aid to countries opposing the Soviets |
Berlin airlift | A program in which the United States and Britain shipped supplies by air to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade of all routes to the city |
NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization' a deference military alliance of twelve Western nations formed in 1949 |
Warsaw Pact | A military alliance of the Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe, established in 1955 |
Hydrogen bomb | A nuclear weapon that gets its power from the fusing together of hydrogen atoms |
Deterrence | The development of or maintenance of military power to deter, or prevent , an attack |
Sputnik | The first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union |
Bay of Pigs invation | The failed attempt of Cuban exiles backed by the US to overthrow the Cuban socialist government of Fidel Castro |
Cuban missile crisis | Confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet missiles in Cuba |
Nonaligned nations | Nations who refused to ally with either side in the Cold War between the United States ans the Soviet Union |
detente | Efforts taken by US president Nixon in the late 1960's and early 1970's to lower Cold War tensions |
Martin Luther King Jr | American civil rights leader; he was a celebrated and charismatic advocate of civil rights for African Americans in the 1950's and 1960's. He was assassinated in 1968 |
Counterculture | A rebellion of teens and young adults against mainstream american culture in the 1960's |
Solidarity | An independent labor union founded in Soviet- controlled Poland in 1980 |
Mikhail Gorbachev | Russian politician; he was the last president of the Soviet Union before the countries collapse in 1991 |
Glasnost | "Openness" Refers to a new era of media freedom in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980's |
Perestroika | "Restructuring" of the corrupt government bureaucracy in the Soviet Union begun by Mikhail Gorbachev |
Velvet Revolution | A quick, peaceful revolution that swept the Communists from power in Czechoslovakia |
Boris Yetsin | Russian politician and president of Russia in the 1990's; he was the first popularity elected leader of the country |
Ethnic cleansing | The elimination of an ethnic group from society through killing or forced migration |
Internet | An electronic system that allows the linking of millions of individual computers around the world |
Saddam Hussein | President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003; he established a brutal dictatorship, suppressed all dissent, and led Iraq into wars with Iran and Kuwait. He was removed from power in 2003 by US-led forces |
Persian Gulf War | War in which US-led forces liberated Kuwait from Iraq |
Al Qaeda | "The base" Islamist terrorist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks |
Osama bin Laden | Founder of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, and other attacks |
Taliban | Islamist group that took control over much of Afghanistan in the late 1990's; were ousted by the United States invasion of 2001 |
Arms race | Competition between nations to gain an advantage in weapons |