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Reading 9.3
End of the Cold War
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Mikhail Gorbachev | Soviet leader who introduced reforms to the Soviet Union and worked with President Reagan to ease Cold War tensions, which ultimately helped lead the the break up of the Soviet Union. |
| “Evil Empire” | Name President Reagan used in reference to the Soviet Union and its global influence in order to promote support for increased military spending. |
| Satellites | Buffer communist states in Eastern and Central Europe created and supported by the Soviet Union as a protection measure against another German-like invasion from the West. |
| B-1 Bomber | New supersonic bomber aircraft that President Reagan supported incorporating into the military as part of his increased Cold War defense spending. |
| MX Missile | New type of intercontinental ballistic missile that President Reagan supported incorporating into the military as part of his increased Cold War defense spending. |
| Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) | Proposed plan for building a high-tech system of lasers and particle beams to destroy enemy missiles that President Reagan supported, but it ultimately was not built. |
| “Star Wars” | Term critics applied to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) for being too costly and impractical as a true missile defense system. |
| Sandinistas | Communist movement in Nicaragua that overthrew the country’s dictator in 1979, which was opposed by the Contras. |
| Contras | Right wing rebels in Nicaragua that opposed the Sandinistas and were supported by the United States until the Boland Amendment, but the Reagan Administration continued to covertly support them. |
| Boland Amendment | Congressional law passed in 1985 that prohibited the United States from sending further aid to the Contras, which the Reagan Administration violated in the Iran-Contra Affair. |
| El Salvador | Central American country that the Reagan Administration supported against leftist guerillas in spite of alleged connections to right-wing death squads who were killing civilians. |
| Grenada | Small Caribbean island where a coup led to the establishment of a pro-Cuban regime, but in 1983 President Reagan ordered a small force of marines to invade and successfully established a pro-U.S. regime. |
| Iran-Contra Affair | Plan by the Reagan Administration to sell weapons to Iran and use the money to fund the Contras, which was in violation of the Boland Amendment and President Reagan denied any involvement. |
| Lebanon | Middle Eastern country invaded by Israel in 1982 that led to President Reagan sending in peacekeeping troops, but the peacekeeping mission was ended after sustaining large casualties. |
| Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) | Palestinian nationalist political and militant entity founded in 1964 that launched attacks on Israel from Lebanon, which led to Israel’s invasion in 1982. |
| Beirut | Capital of Lebanon and the location of multiple terrorist attacks on U.S. State Department employees and U.S. Marines in 1983, which led President Reagan to end the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. |
| George Schultz | Secretary of State for President Reagan who pushed for a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by setting up a homeland for the PLO in the Israeli occupied West Bank territories. |
| Yasser Arafat | Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) who agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist in 1988 as part of an effort to create a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. |
| Glasnost | Major reform introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that involved an openness to ending political repression and moving toward greater political freedom for Soviet citizens. |
| Perestroika | Major reform introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that involved a restructuring of the Soviet economy by introducing some free-market practices. |
| INF Agreement | Diplomatic agreement between President Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to remove and destroy all intermediate-range missiles as part of a series of summits between the leaders. |
| Lech Walesa | Leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland who helped bring down the communist regime and whose election helped spark the fall of communist regimes in many other Eastern European nations. |
| John Paul II | Catholic Pope who was from Poland and supported the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. |
| George Kennan | Expert on Soviet affairs under President Truman who helped create the U.S. foreign policy of containment during the Cold War through the Truman Doctrine. |
| Persian Gulf War | Coalition of United Nations members put together by President H. W. Bush successfully invaded Iraq in 1991 to restore Kuwait’s independence. |
| Desert Storm | Name for the invasion of Iraq in 1991 by a coalition of United Nations members put together by President H. W. Bush to restore Kuwait’s independence. |
| Tiananmen Square | Public square in Beijing where prodemocracy demonstrations were violently put down by the communist Chinese government in 1989. |
| Solidarity Movement | Anticommunist movement in Poland that successfully ended the communist regime with the election of Lech Walesa in 1990. |
| Berlin Wall | Fortification surrounding West Berlin controversially built by the East Germans with Soviet backing in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Berlin, which was torn down in 1989. |
| Soviet Baltic Republics | Nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. |
| Boris Yeltsin | President of the Russian Republic after the fall of the Soviet Union who dissolved the Communist Party and attempted to establish a democracy with a free-market economy. |
| Russian Republic | Government of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, which Boris Yeltsin attempted to move toward a democracy with a free-market economy. |
| Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) | Loose confederation of the Russian Republic with nine other former Soviet Republics after the fall of the Soviet Union. |
| START I | Diplomatic agreement between President H. W. Bush and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 to reduce the number of nuclear warheads to under 10,000 for each side. |
| START II | Diplomatic agreement between President H. W. Bush and Russian leader Boris Yeltsin in 1992 to reduce the number of nuclear weapons to just over 3,000 each. |
| Yugoslavia | Former Soviet satellite that experienced a brutal civil war that started in 1990, which resulted in multiple genocidal “ethnic cleansings” and required the involvement of NATO troops to stop the violence. |
| European Union (EU) | Political and economic union of many European nations formed in 2002 that increased cooperation and led many members to adopt a common currency through the euro. |
| Euro | Common currency used by a majority of the members of the European Union, which made trade and economic regulation easier between member nations. |
| Poland | Example of a former Soviet satellite that toppled their communist regime and eventually joined the European Union. |
| Vladimir Putin | President of Russia elected after Boris Yeltsin who greatly strained relations with the United States through his brutal repression of the civil war in Chechnya and opposition to NATO expansion. |
| Chechnya | Republic of Russia that tried to become an independent nation in the 1990s, but was violently suppressed by the Russian military under President Vladimir Putin. |
| Balkan Wars | Series of wars fought over the territory of Yugoslavia that resulted in multiple genocidal “ethnic cleansings” and required the involvement of NATO troops to stop the violence. |
| Slobodan Milosevic | Serbian dictator who violently suppressed independence movements in the former Yugoslav provinces of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. |
| “Ethnic Cleansing” | Genocidal mass murder of people based on their ethnicity and/or religion, which was a major issue of the Balkan Wars and required the involvement of NATO troops to stop the violence. |
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