| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Marshall Plan | The recovery plan made after the war by the US. nearly 13 billion was spent between 1948 - 1952 |
| Peaceful Coexistence | Is a term that Khrushchev used in 1963 to describe a situation in which teh United States and the Soviet Union continued to compete economically and pollitically without launching a thermonuculear war |
| NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization, begun in 1949 as a military and political alliance of European nations and the United States and Canada designed to protect Western Europe from a Soviet attack. |
| Iron Curtain | Term used by Churchill in 1946 to describe the growing East-West divide in postwar Europe between communist and democratic nations |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | Week of international tension in October 1962 when the world stood at the brink of nuclear war, after the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons on Cuba and the United States responded with a blockade of the island on October 22. The Soviets agreed six days later to withdraw the weapons |
| Bay of Pigs | Landing area on Cuba's south coast where an American-organized invasion by Cuban exiles was defeated by Fidel Castro's government forces April 17-20, 1961 |
| SDI | Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (1983), also known as "Star Wars," called for a land- or space-based shield against a nuclear attack. Although SDI was criticized as unfeasible and in violation of the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Congress approved billions of dollars for development. |
| Glasnost | Policy of openness initiated by Gorbachev in the 1980s that provided increased opportunities for freedom of speech, association and the press in the Soviet Union. |
| Containment | Policy established by the Truman administration in 1947 to contain Soviet influence to what it was at the end of World War II. |
| Fallout Shelter | Underground concrete structures, often stocked with food and water supplies, designed to withstand fallout from a nuclear attack; popular in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. |
| Détente | A thaw in Cold War relations between the United States and Soviet Union from 1969-1975, highlighted by the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaty and the Helsinki Accords. |
| Truman Doctrine | First established in 1947 after Britain no longer could afford to provide anti-communist aid to Greece and Turkey, it pledged to provide U.S. military and economic aid to any nation threatened by communism. |
| Berlin Airlift | Successful effort by the United States and Britain to ship by air 2.3 million tons of supplies to the residents of the Western-controlled sectors of Berlin from June 1948 to May 1949, in response to a Soviet blockade of all land and canal routes to the divided city. |
| Perestroika | Gorbachev's policy of economic restructuring in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. |
| Sputnik | First artificial Earth satellite, it was launched by Moscow in 1957 and sparked U.S. fears of Soviet dominance in technology and outer space. It led to the creation of NASA and the space race. |
| Warsaw Pact | Soviet-led Eastern European defense organization established in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955; the alliance countered the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). |
| Velvet Revolution | Mass protests in Czechoslovakia, led by playwright Vaclev Havel, that culminated in the fall of communism in that country in November 1989. |
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