Cold War and Modern Global Conflicts Vocabulary

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering early maritime and ethnic terms, Cold War international treaties and doctrines, regional conflicts, and twentieth-century political movements.

Barbary Pirates

Those who plied the seas along the Barbary Coast, captured other Europeans in the Mediterranean, and sold them to the sultan or other high-ranking officials.

Impressed

Forced into service in the navy as enslaved galley workers.

Sephardic Jews

Jews who trace their heritage back to Spain.

Ashkenazi Jews

Jews from central and eastern Europe.

Tehran Conference

A conference in Iran where the Allies agreed that the Soviet Union would focus on freeing Eastern Europe while Britain and the US would concentrate on Western Europe; Britain and the US also gave some Polish territory to the Soviet Union.

Yalta Conference

A conference on the Black Sea where leaders focused on plans for reconstructing Eastern Europe and for defeating Japan.

Potsdam Conference

The final meeting among leaders of the Big Three, where President Truman wanted free elections in Eastern Europe, but the Soviets refused.

Cold War

A conflict that does not involve direct military confrontation between two or more rival states.

Military-Industrial Complex

The informal alliance between the government and large defense contractors.

Satellite Countries

Small states that are economically or politically dependent on a larger, more powerful state.

Containment

The policy of not letting communism spread farther, advocated by George Kennan.

Truman Doctrine

A strong statement that the US would do what it had to do to stop the spread of communist influence, specifically in Greece and Turkey.

Marshall Plan

An economic program that offered $\$12\text{ billion}$ to aid all nations in Europe, including Germany.

Sputnik

The Soviet Union's first artificial satellite that was launched into orbit around Earth.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created by Western nations to coordinate their defenses in case of a conflict with the Soviets.

Warsaw Pact

The Soviet Union's response to NATO, in which member nations combined their armed forces and based their army leaders in Moscow.

Communist Bloc

The alliance of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact.

Domino Theory

The idea that if one country in the region became communist, other countries would soon follow.

Bay of Pigs

A failed operation in which a group of Cuban exiles who opposed Castro received US government backing to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro.

Great Leap Forward

A campaign in China by Mao Zedong where peasant lands were organized into communes—large agricultural communities where the state held the land, not private owners.

Red Guards

Groups of revolutionary students in China.

White Revolution

A series of progressive reforms instituted without bloodshed in Iran by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.

Muslim League

An organization that advocated a separate nation for Indian Muslims.

Organization of African Unity

An organization founded with the vision of Pan-Africanism, focusing on returning Africans back to Africa, the unity of African culture, and the rejection of colonial intervention.

Ho Chi Minh

The communist leader of North Vietnam.

Viet Cong

South Vietnamese who supported the communists.

Suez Crisis

A confrontation triggered when Nasser of Egypt seized the British- and French-administered Suez Canal; Israel invaded Egypt at the command of Britain and France, who then occupied the area until the US and the Soviet Union resolved the crisis through the UN.

Quiet Revolution

A period in Quebec where the Liberal Party gained power and reformed economic policies, leading to further desires for separation from the rest of British-controlled Canada.

Six-Day War

A conflict where Israel fought on three fronts at once and gained the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

Yom Kippur War

A conflict in which Israel repelled a surprise invasion launched by Egypt and Syria.

Camp David Accords

A peace agreement reached between Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

PLO

The Palestinian Liberation Organization; an organization that wanted the return of occupied lands and the creation of an independent nation of Palestine.

Khmer Rouge

A communist guerrilla organization under Pol Pot that overthrew the right-wing government of Cambodia.

Kashmir

A border region in the mountainous north that was fought over by India and Pakistan.

Prague Spring

A reform movement in Czechoslovakia where Alexander Dubcek of the Communist Party increased freedom of speech and the press, allowed greater travel freedom, and agreed to make the political system more democratic.

Brezhnev Doctrine

A Soviet doctrine stating that the Soviet Union and its allies would intervene if an action by one member threatened other socialist countries.

Irish Republican Army

Catholics in the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland.

Ulster Defence Association

Protestants in the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland.

Shining Path

A revolutionary organization founded by Abimael Guzmán based on the ideas of Mao Zedong and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.

Détente

A relaxation of strained relations between nations.

SALT

The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty; an agreement between Nixon and the Soviets designed to freeze the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles that each power could keep.

SDI

The Strategic Defense Initiative; a US missile defense program designed to destroy any Soviet nuclear missiles targeting the US or its allies.

Perestroika

Attempts to restructure the Soviet economy to allow elements of free enterprise.

Glasnost

The policy of opening up Soviet society and the political process by granting greater freedom.