AICE US History Cold War

Terms/Backgrounds for AICE Paper 3

## 17th Parallel

### Line of latitude that separated North and South Vietnam

## 38th Parallel

### Latitude line/Boundary between North Korea & South Korea

## Apollo 11

### Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became first people to walk on the moon (1969)

## Bay of Pigs

### Failed CIA operation to overthrow Castro and take over Cuba using Cuban exiles (April 1961

## Berlin Airlift

### A 327-day operation in which U.S. and British planes flew food and supplies into West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded the city in 1948.

## Berlin Wall

### A concrete wall that separated East Berlin and West Berlin from 1961-1989, built by Communist East German government to prevent its citizens from fleeing to the West

## Brinkmanship

### A policy of threatening to go to war in response to any enemy aggression

## China

### Asian nation that turns to Communism in 1949 after the Mao Zedong comes into power and fights with the North in the Korean War

## Communism

### An economic and political system based on one-party government and state ownership of property

## Containment

### The blocking of another nation's attempts to spread it's influence - especially the efforts of the United States to block the spread of Soviet influence during the late 1940s to early 1950s

## Cuban Missile Crisis

### Soviet nuclear missile were pointed at the U.S in Cuba (13-Day period in October 1962)

## Détente

### A policy of reducing Cold War tensions that was adopted by the U.S during the presidency of Richard Nixon

## **Domino Theory**

### If a nation falls under communist control, nearby nations will also fall under communist control

## Fidel Castro

### Communist dictator of Cuba who came into power in 1959

## Friendship 7

### US space capsule orbits the earth with John Glenn on board (1962)

* **Proves that NASA can send a man safely into space and return to Earth**

## Harry Truman

### Fired General Douglass MacArthur over disagreements on the Korean War

## Ho Chi Minh

### Communist leader of North Vietnam led the fight against the French and then the Americans to reunify the country

## Iron Curtain

### **A phrase used by Winston Churchill to describe the imaginary line that separated Communist countries in the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe from the countries in Western Europe (1946)**

## John F. Kennedy (JFK)

### 35th President of the United States. Was in office during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cuban Missile Crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall

## Joseph Stalin

### Soviet leader following World War II, dies in the middle of the Korean War in 1953

## Korean War

### A conflict between North Korea and South Korea, lasting from 1950-1953, in which the United States along with other UN countries, fought on the side of the South Koreans while China fought on the side of the North Koreans

## Lyndon B. Johnson

### Became president after Kennedy's assassination and reelected in 1964; committed the US more heavily to fighting in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

## Mao Zedong

### Communist leader of China who comes into power in 1949

## Marshall Plan

### **A program proposed by Secretary of State George Marshall (1947)**

* **U.S supplied economic aid to European nations to help them rebuild after WW2**

## NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

### Military alliance created in 1949 made up of 12 non-Communist countries including the United States that support each other if attacked

* **Members: United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Turkey, Greece, West Germany**

## Nikita Khrushchev

### Soviet leader from 1955-1964, responsible for putting missiles in Cuba

## Result of the Vietnam War

### North Vietnam takes over South Vietnam

## SALT

## (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty)

### Negotiations between the U.S and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics designed to limit both countries' stock of nuclear weapons

## Satellite Nations

### A country that is dominated politically and economically by another nation

## Stalemate

### **Result of the Korean War**

## **Truman Doctrine**

### **A policy introduced by US President Harry S. Truman in 1947**

* **Aimed to contain the spread of communism by** __**providing economic and military aid countries**__ **threatened by internal or external opponents**
* **Ex: Greece/Turkey**
* **A** __**response to the Soviet Union’s expansionist policies**__
* __**Marked the beginning**__ **of the Cold War**

## United Nations

### An international organization formed after WWII to promote international peace, security, and cooperation

## Vostok 1

### **Yuri Gagarin's space flight completed a single orbit around Earth before re-entering and parachuting out of his capsule (1961)**

## **Warsaw Pact**

### **A Military alliance formed by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites (1955)**

* **Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania**