Cold War: Calendar Terms

Vocabulary flashcards for Cold War key terms.

Cold War

A period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, characterized by proxy wars, ideological conflict, and the threat of nuclear war.

Proxy war

A conflict in which opposing powers use third parties as substitutes instead of fighting each other directly.

Superpowers

Dominant nations with significant influence in international affairs, typically possessing strong military, economic, and political power (e.g., the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War).

Iron curtain

The political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

Satellite nations

Countries that were aligned with or under the influence and pressure of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Containment

A United States foreign policy doctrine adopted to prevent the spread of communism during the Cold War.

Decolonization

The process by which colonies become independent from the colonizing country.

Domino Theory

The theory that a political event in one country will cause similar events in neighboring countries, like a falling domino leading to a whole row of upended dominoes.

Marshall Plan

A United States program of economic aid for the reconstruction of Europe (1948 1952).

Truman Doctrine

The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance formed in 1949 by the US, Canada, and Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Warsaw Pact

A military alliance of communist nations in eastern Europe organized in 1955 in answer to NATO; included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

38th Parallel

The line of latitude that divides North and South Korea.

Space race

A 20th-century (1955 1972) competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability.

Arms race

A competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons, especially between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Brinkmanship

The practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, especially in politics.

Glasnost

The policy of more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information, initiated by leader Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985.

Perestroika

A political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s widely associated with leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Mao Zedong

Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China.

Ho Chi Minh

A Vietnamese communist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.