Key Terms
United States foreign policy that attempted to halt the spread of Communism.
Containment
US military response to the 1948 blockade of Berlin by the Soviet Union, in which US planes continued to fly in much-needed supplies and resources to West Berlin to prevent them from falling to communist rule.
Berlin Airlift
Cooling of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, during the time period 1969 - 1979.
Detente
1949 alliance between the United States and 11 other Western nations to counterweight the power of the Soviet Union, and halt the spread of communism.
NATO
North
Atlantic
Treaty
Organization
Berlin Airlift
1948
A competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons, especially between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Arms Race
A failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Also known as the Second Indochina War, was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1955 to 1975.
Vietnam War
The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded this rival alliance to the western alliance in 1955.
Warsaw Pact
Cuban Missile Crisis
1962
United States Cold War philosophy which stated if a country fell to communism it was more likely that its neighbors would also fall to communism.
Domino Theory
Physical partition that separated Soviet-controlled East Germany from NATO-supported West Germany.
The Berlin Wall
Point of latitude running through East Asia that roughly demarcates North Korea and South Korea.
38th Parallel
North Korea
Korean War
1950 - 1953
Program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet communism.
The signing of this agreement signaled a period of detente, or cooling tensions, between the United States and the Soviet Union.
SALT:
Strategic
Arms
Limitations
Talks
Area between North and South Korea - it is still the most heavily fortified border in the world.
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
During the Vietnam War (1955-1975), the Viet Cong were supported by the ___________.
Soviet Union
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks)
1972 and 1979
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.
Mutually Assured Destruction
1946 speech by Winston Churchill in which he stressed the need for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism.
Iron Curtain Speech
The first Soviet military expedition beyond the Eastern bloc since World War II and marked the end of a period of improving relations (known as détente) in the Cold War.
Mujahideen
Fall of the Berlin Wall
1989