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Korean War
Began on June 25, 1950, when the communist North invaded the South. Almost immediately, the United States secured a resolution from the United Nations calling for the military defense of the South against the North aggression. In a matter of days, U.S. land, air, and sea forces had joined the battle. The U.S. intervention turned the tide of the war, and soon the U.S. and Southern forces were pushing into the North and toward that nation’s border with China. The war eventually bogged down into a battle of attrition.
IKE’s “New Look”
The name given to the national security policy of the United States during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It reflected Eisenhower's concern for balancing the Cold War military commitments of the United States with the nation's financial resources. The policy emphasized reliance on strategic nuclear weapons to deter potential threats, both conventional and nuclear, from the Eastern Bloc of nations headed by the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev’s “Peaceful Co-Existence”
Theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of primarily Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and was adopted by Soviet-allied socialist states that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc (i.e., U.S.-allied states).
Iran Coup: Operation Ajax
Deposed the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his cabinet, it was effected by Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and CIA agents working with anti- Communist civilians and army officers. This was the attempt to encourage a coup d'état required CIA man Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.'s bribing government officials, the news media, and businessmen, to allow imposing retired Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi and Imperial Guard Col. Nematollah Nassiri as the government. The coup was a Cold War incident; it was feared that Mosaddeq's government would shift Iran into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence.
Taiwan Crisis
After his defeat by Mao in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek fled to a Chinese island, then called Formosa, along with two million Nationalist refugees. It is 100 miles off China's coast. There he established a "provisional" Nationalist capital in Taipei and declares martial law. The Nationalists claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of China, and set up the same political bodies on the island which had ruled on the mainland.
Hydrogen Bomb
Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first United States test, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle. Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States with a yield of 15 megatons of TNT. That yield, far exceeding the expected yield of 4 to 8 megatons (6 Mt predicted), combined with other factors, led to the most significant accidental radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.
Massive Retaliation
On January 12, 1954 in a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner in his honor, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that the United States will protect its allies through this. The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily on the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the primary means of defense against communist aggression.
Brinkmanship
The ostensible escalation of threats to achieve one's aims. During the Cold War, this was used as a policy by the United States to coerce the Soviet Union into backing down militarily. Eventually, the threats involved might become so huge as to be unmanageable at which point both sides are likely to back down. This was the case during the Cold War; the escalation of threats of nuclear war, if carried out, are likely to lead to mutually assured destruction.
Dien Bien Phu: First Indochina War
This battle was the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War. After French forces occupied the valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap amassed troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp. Viet Minh forces overran the base in early May, prompting the French government to seek an end to the fighting with the signing of the Geneva Accords of 1954.
Geneva Conference/Geneva Accords
Representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, France, and Great Britain came together in April 1954 to try to resolve several problems related to Asia. One of the most troubling concerns was the long and bloody battle between Vietnamese nationalist forces, under the leadership of the communist Ho Chi Minh, and the French, who were intent on continuing colonial control over Vietnam. The United States had been supporting the French out of concern that a victory for Ho’s forces would be the first step in communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia.
Domino Theory
A Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states.
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)
An alliance to contain any communist aggression in the free territories of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, or Southeast Asia in general.
Ngo Dinh Diem
A South Vietnamese politician. He was named Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam by Head of State Bảo Đại in 1954. In October 1955, after winning a heavily rigged referendum, he deposed Bảo Đại and established the first Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with himself as president. He was a leader of the Catholic element and was opposed by Buddhists. In November 1963, after constant Buddhist protests and non-violent resistance, he was assassinated during a CIA-backed coup d'état, along with his brother.
Guatemala Coup
A covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz and ended their revolution. Code-named Operation PBSUCCESS, it installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in this country.
Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites signed a treaty establishing this in 1955, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. Response to NATO.
Khrushchev “Thaw”
Refers to the period from the early 1950s to the early 1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed, and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps due to the new ruler’s policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations. This became possible after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953.
Sino-Soviet Split
The breaking of political relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the USSR, caused by doctrinal divergences that arose from their different interpretations and practical applications of Marxism–Leninism, as influenced by their respective geopolitics during the Cold War.
Hungarian Revolution
Popular uprising in a nation in 1956, following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Encouraged by the new freedom of debate and criticism, a rising tide of unrest and discontent broke out into active fighting in October 1956. Rebels won the first phase of the revolution, and Imre Nagy became premier, agreeing to establish a multiparty system. On November 1, 1956, he declared neutrality and appealed to the United Nations for support, but Western powers were reluctant to risk a global confrontation. On November 4 the Soviet Union invaded to stop the revolution, and Nagy was executed for treason in 1958. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million citizens fled the country. Nevertheless, Stalinist-type domination and exploitation did not return, and the nation thereafter experienced a slow evolution toward some internal autonomy.
Suez Crisis/Sinai War
Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward a canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating this issue. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957.
Lebanon Crisis / Eisenhower Doctrine
In response to the increasingly tense situation in the Middle East, the president delivered a proposal to a joint session of the U.S. Congress calling for a new and more proactive American policy in the region. This established the Middle East as a Cold War (1945-91) battlefield.
Sputnik
The Soviet Union inaugurated the “Space Age” with its launch of the world’s first artificial satellite.
Space Race
Started by the launch of Sputnik by the USSR. Competition between nations around the world to explore outside of Earth.
Missile Gap
The Cold War term used in the US for the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with its own (a lack of military parity).
NASA
Eisenhower signed an act to establish this. Aided the US in the Space Race. It absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact; its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of US$100 million, three major research laboratories and two small test facilities. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated.
Cuban Revolution
An armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement and its allies against the authoritarian government of President Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953, and continued sporadically until the rebels finally ousted Batista on 31 December 1958, replacing his government with a revolutionary socialist state.
Fulgencio Batista
Ruled Cuba, sometimes formally and sometimes by proxy, for most of the 25 years before Fidel Castro's rise to power at the end of 1958. During that time, he subverted the constitution and terrorized political opponents. He enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle from the money generated by the influx of tourism and American corporations to the island, while the country's poor became even more impoverished. He did so with the explicit support of American mobsters and with the acquiescence of the American government. American interest in Cuban democracy did not emerge until after the country had a communist government.
Fidel Castro
Cuban leader who established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. During that time, his regime was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care, but was widely criticized for stifling economic and political freedoms. His Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States– most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
U2 Spy Plane Incident
An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 when the USSR shot down an American plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet agent in the first-ever U.S.-USSR “spy swap.” This raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War.
IKE’s Farewell Address
The final public speech of Eisenhower as the 34th President of the United States, delivered in a television broadcast on January 17, 1961. Perhaps best known for advocating that the nation guard against the potential influence of the military–industrial complex, a term he is credited with coining, the speech also expressed concerns about planning for the future and the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending, the prospect of the domination of science through Federal funding and, conversely, the domination of science-based public policy by what he called a "scientific-technological elite".
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