International Political Economy and Cold War History

Vocabulary flashcards covering key international political economy concepts, historical treaties, diplomatic events, and Cold War doctrines from the lecture notes.

Mercantilism

The oldest approach to political economy, which viewed power as closely linked with the possession of gold and silver, meaning there is a strict supply of wealth. It advocates accumulating wealth by selling more and buying less (expanding exports and limiting imports) in a zero-sum game focused solely on relative gains.

Protectionism

A policy focused on relative gains, positing that limits placed on other states yield more power. States subsidize domestic industries and restrict imports through tariffs, quotas, or higher regulation restrictions to protect domestic producers from foreign competition.

(Economic) Liberalism

A free-market approach that dominated after WWII, emphasizing the cooperative over the conflictual nature of International Political Economy (IPE). It focuses on common gains, increasing absolute wealth, and views trade as a positive-sum game where the economic pie is not fixed.

Comparative advantage

A foundational economic concept formulated by David Ricardo asserting that if individuals or states specialize according to what they produce at a lower opportunity cost and then trade, overall welfare increases, making trade a positive-sum game even if a country holds an absolute advantage in all goods.

Factor Endowments

The relative abundance or scarcity of fundamental inputs and resources—primarily land (natural resources), labor (workforce), and capital (financial/physical infrastructure and technology)—possessed by a nation, which explains trade policy preferences, domestic political coalitions, and class versus sector conflicts in IPE.

Dependency Theory

A theory originating from Latin American economists such as Raul Prebisch that challenges liberal economics by arguing that underdevelopment in the Global South is actively produced by integration into the capitalist global economy, dividing the world into an advanced, dominant core and a dependent periphery.

Periphery States

Low-income, developing nations in World-Systems and Dependency theory that occupy a subordinate global position, supplying cheap labor, raw materials, and agricultural goods to core nations in exchange for expensive manufactured goods, resulting in capital flight, debt dependence, and limited domestic industrialization.

Isolationist

A foreign policy doctrine where a nation avoids foreign alliances, political entanglements, and overseas military interventions to preserve sovereignty and prioritize domestic affairs, exemplified by the US rejection of the League of Nations and the passage of the Neutrality Acts during the interwar period (1919–1939).

MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)

A doctrine of military strategy and national security policy based on deterrence theory positing that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.

Foreign Aid

The international transfer of capital, goods, or services from donor governments or international institutions to recipient nations for economic development, emergency relief, or military support. Realists view it as strategic influence, liberals view it as cooperative development, and critical theorists warn it creates structural dependency.

Nuclear deterrence

An international relations strategy grounded in rational choice theory that employs the threat of nuclear retaliation to prevent an adversary from attacking. Its effectiveness relies on capability (survivable nuclear forces), credibility (perceived resolve), and extended deterrence (shielding allies).

Appeasement

A foreign policy of making concessions to an aggressive power to prevent conflict and preserve peace, best exemplified by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy toward Nazi Germany and the 1938 Munich Agreement, which ultimately failed by strengthening the aggressor.

Lend-lease

A pre-WWII US foreign policy program that ended strict American isolationism and established the US as the "Arsenal of democracy" by replacing "cash-and-carry" with deferred credit and leased materiel, supplying military equipment, food, and aid to Allied nations (primarily Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China).

Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (1918)

President Woodrow Wilson's liberal internationalist blueprint for post-WWI global peace, which advocated for open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, national self-determination, disarmament, and a general association of nations that directly inspired the League of Nations.

League of Nations

An international organization founded in 1920 to maintain global peace through collective security and disarmament. It ultimately failed to prevent WWII due to institutional weaknesses, including US non-membership, unanimous voting rules, and the lack of an independent military force to enforce sanctions.

Warsaw Pact (1966-1991)

A collective defense treaty created by the Soviet Union and seven Eastern Bloc satellite states as a counterweight to NATO following West Germany's integration into the Western alliance. The USSR used it to enforce political control and satellite compliance under the Brezhnev Doctrine (e.g., Czechoslovakia in 1968).

Bilateral Foreign Aid

A channel of international development assistance provided directly from one country to another (e.g., USAID), allowing donor states to advance specific foreign policy, strategic, and security goals.

Multilateral Foreign Aid

A channel of international assistance that pools resources from multiple governments through international organizations (e.g., World Bank, IMF, UN) to fund global development goals, reducing single-state geopolitical leverage but often imposing conditionality and structural reforms.

Perestroika

A political and economic restructuring movement initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s that introduced limited market reforms and decentralized economic control alongside glasnost (openness), contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Factors of Production

The fundamental inputs required to produce goods and services: Land (natural resources), Labor (human work), Capital (machinery, tech, finance), and Entrepreneurship. Their domestic abundance or scarcity determines comparative trade advantages and shapes political coalitions (Stolper-Samuelson/Rogowski Model).

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, est. 1949)

An intergovernmental military alliance established by the US, Canada, and Western European nations for collective defense and Cold War containment against Soviet aggression, centered around the Article 5 collective defense clause ("an attack on one is an attack on all").

Interwar Naval Treaties (1922-1936)

A series of naval disarmament pacts—most notably the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty—that set strict warship tonnage ratios ($5:5:3$ for the US, UK, and Japan, respectively) to prevent a naval arms race, which collapsed in the mid-1930s following Japan's withdrawal and rearmament.

Congress of Vienna (1814-1815)

A major international conference chaired by Metternich that redrew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat. Guided by legitimacy (restoring monarchies) and balance of power to contain France, it created the Concert of Europe and maintained general continental peace for nearly a century.

Concert of Europe (1815-1853)

A balance-of-power system established by major European powers (Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and later France) to maintain territorial stability and suppress liberal revolutions through periodic multilateral congresses, which collapsed during the Crimean War.

Treaty of Versailles (1919)

The primary peace treaty ending WWI, negotiated by the Allied powers at the Paris Peace Conference. It established the League of Nations and imposed Article 231 (War Guilt Clause), territorial losses, military restrictions, and heavy economic reparations on Germany, fueling revanchist nationalism.

Potsdam Conference (1945)

The final WWII summit among the US, UK, and USSR setting terms for post-war European order and Germany's occupation under the Four D’s (Demilitarization, denazification, decentralization, democratization), while issuing the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender.

Truman Doctrine (1947)

A foundational US Cold War policy established by President Harry S. Truman pledging political, economic, and military aid to democratic nations threatened by communist authoritarianism (spurred by Greece and Turkey), permanently ending American isolationism and initiating containment.

Berlin Blockade (1948-1949)

The first major Cold War crisis, initiated when the USSR severed ground transport links to Western-controlled West Berlin following Allied currency reforms. The US and UK responded with the Berlin Airlift for nearly a year, solidifying Germany's division and leading directly to NATO's formation.

Marshall Plan (1948)

Officially known as the European Recovery Program, this US aid package delivered over $\$13\,\text{billion}$ to reconstruct Western European economies after WWII, aiming to operationalize containment, halt the spread of communism, and promote Western economic integration.

Korean War (1950-1953)

The first Cold War military conflict, sparked when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea. US and Allied forces intervened under a UN mandate, Chinese forces entered in late 1950, and the conflict culminated in a 1953 Armistice establishing the DMZ near the 38th parallel.

Vietnam War (1955-1975)

A major Cold War proxy conflict in which the US intervened to defend South Vietnam against the communist North based on Domino Theory and containment. Ending with the 1975 fall of Saigon, it highlighted the limits of military power projection and prompted a shift toward détente.

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

A 13-day nuclear confrontation between the US and USSR over Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba. Resolved via a US naval "quarantine," Soviet missile withdrawal, a US pledge not to invade Cuba, and the secret removal of US missiles from Turkey, it led to the creation of the Washington-Moscow hotline.

Smith Conference (Smithsonian Agreement, 1971)

An international meeting of G10 nations designed to salvage the international monetary system following the 1971 "Nixon Shock." It devalued the US dollar and revalued Allied currencies, but its collapse in early 1973 marked the permanent transition from fixed exchange rates to floating exchange rates.

SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaties)

Milestone arms control agreements between the US and USSR during détente; SALT I (1972) created the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and froze ICBM/SLBM launcher levels, while SALT II (1979) placed numerical caps on strategic delivery systems and MIRVs before being shelved after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Reagan Doctrine (1980s)

A US foreign policy under President Ronald Reagan that transitioned Cold War strategy from containment to active rollback, supplying overt and covert military and financial aid to anti-communist insurgents in the Third World (e.g., the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua).

Detente

A period of reduced hostility and diplomatic normalization among the US, USSR, and China from the late 1960s to 1979. Driven by realpolitik and triangular diplomacy, it emphasized arms control and trade before ending with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)

The collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, symbolizing the end of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the Cold War. Spurred by Gorbachev's reforms and mass protests, it led to German reunification in 1990 and the transition to a US-led unipolar international system.

Tariffs

Taxes levied by a government on imported goods to protect domestic industries from foreign competition or raise revenue. While benefiting domestic producers, tariffs increase consumer costs, produce economic deadweight loss, and risk retaliatory trade wars.

Adam Smith

A foundational scholar of classical economic liberalism whose work (The Wealth of Nations) introduced the invisible hand and absolute advantage, refuting mercantilism by arguing that free trade and specialization based on efficiency create a positive-sum game.

Marxist Theory

An analytical framework viewing the international system through historical materialism, class struggle, and inequality. It posits that global capitalism creates an exploitative core-periphery hierarchy where powerful capitalist states utilize foreign policy and military power to export capital and maintain dominance.