Alliances & Relations
Founded in 1949, this alliance links the United States, Canada, and European allies in a system of collective defense.
What is NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization)?
Governments impose these economic restrictions, including asset freezes and trade limits, to pressure other actors.
What are sanctions?
This 1962 confrontation over Soviet missiles in a Caribbean country brought Washington and Moscow close to nuclear war.
What is the Cuban Missile Crisis?
This U.S. department leads American diplomacy and operates U.S. embassies.
What is the Department of State
The United States entered this global conflict after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
What is WW2
The Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies formed this military alliance in 1955 as a counterweight to NATO.
What is the Warsaw Pact?
This strategy seeks to prevent an adversary from acting by making the expected costs or likelihood of failure too high.
What is deterrence?
This U.S. president was in office when the Iranian hostage crisis began in November 1979, after Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Who is Jimmy Carter? The clue asks who was president when the crisis began; the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, after Ronald Reagan took office.
This civilian intelligence agency collects foreign intelligence and conducts covert action when authorized.
What is the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA?
Beijing claims this self-governed island as part of China; its government is officially called the Republic of China.
What is Taiwan?
Invoked for the first time after the September 11 attacks, this numbered article of the North Atlantic Treaty treats an attack against one ally as an attack against them all.
What is Article 5?
Popularized by Joseph Nye, this form of power relies on attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment.
What is soft power?
Associated with George Kennan, this Cold War strategy sought to prevent the expansion of Soviet power and influence.
What is containment?
This U.S. intelligence agency specializes in foreign signals intelligence, including intercepted electronic communications.
What is the National Security Agency, or NSA?
Passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973, this resolution seeks to limit unilateral presidential military action through reporting requirements and a clock for withdrawing forces without congressional authorization.
What is the War Powers Resolution? Accept “War Powers Act.”
Announced in 2021, this partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States includes helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines.
What is AUKUS?
In this international-relations dilemma, one state’s defensive military buildup makes other states feel less secure and encourages them to arm.
What is the security dilemma?
During the Soviet blockade of 1948–1949, the Western Allies used this operation to deliver food and fuel to West Berlin by plane.
What is the Berlin Airlift?
Created in 2004, this position heads the U.S. intelligence community and serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser.
What is the Director of national intelligence, or DNI? Require the position, not a person’s name.
In 2014, Russia seized and illegally annexed this Ukrainian peninsula, home to the naval base at Sevastopol.
What is Crimea?
India, Egypt, and Yugoslavia helped establish this movement in 1961 for countries seeking independence from both the U.S.-led and Soviet-led blocs.
What is the Non-Aligned Movement?
Unlike deterrence, which seeks to prevent an action, this form of coercion seeks to make an adversary take an action or stop something already underway.
What is compellence? “Coercion” alone is too broad because it also includes deterrence.
British impressment of American sailors helped spark this war, formally ended by the Treaty of Ghent—even though the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the treaty was signed.
What is the War of 1812
Commonly known by a five-letter acronym, this interagency committee reviews certain foreign investments in U.S. businesses for national security risks.
What is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS?
Often abbreviated MAD, this nuclear deterrence concept holds that neither side can escape devastating retaliation if it launches a nuclear attack on the other.
What is mutually assured destruction?