|
 United Nations | An international peacekeeping organization founded in 1945 to provide security to the nations of the world. |
| Marshall Plan | A U.S. program of economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after World War II |
| Containment | A U.S. foreign policy adopted by President Harry Truman in the late 1940s, in which the United States tried to stop the spread of communism by creating alliances and helping weak countries to resist Soviet advances |
| Cold War | The state of diplomatic hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II. |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization | (NATO) - a defensive military alliance formed in 1949 by ten Western European nations, the United States, and Canada. |
| Warsaw Pact | A military alliance formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European countries |
| Brinkmanship | A policy of threatening to go to war in response to any enemy aggression. |
| Domino Theory | The idea that if a nation falls under Communist control, nearby nations will also fall under Communist control. |
| Vietcong | A group of Communist guerrillas who, with the help of North Vietnam, fought against the South Vietnamese government in the Vietnam War. |
| Vietnamization | President Richard Nixon's strategy for ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, involving a gradual withdrawal of American troops and replacement of them with South Vietnamese forces. |
| 38th Parallel | Line that divided Korea - Soviet Union occupied the north and United States occupied the south. |
| Red Guard | Militia units formed by young Chinese people in 1966 in response to Mao Zedong's call for a social and cultural revolutions |
| Cultural Revolution | A 1966-1976 uprising in China led by the Red Guards, with the goal of establishing a society of peasants and workers in which all were equal. |
| Khmer Rouge | A group of Communist rebels who seized power in Cambodia in 1975. |
| Strategic Arms Limitation Talks | (SALT) - a series of meetings in the 1970s, in which leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to limit their nations' stocks of nuclear weapons. |
| Détente | A policy of reducing Cold War tensions that was adopted by the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon. |
| Congress Party | A major national political party in India - also known as the Indian National Congress. |
| Muslim League | An organization formed in 1906 to protect the interests of India's Muslims, which later proposed that India be divided into separate Muslims and Hindu nations. |
| Partition | A division into parts, like the 1947 division of the British colony of India into nations of India and Pakistan. |
| Recession | A slowdown in a nation's economy |
| Palestine Liberation Organization | (PLO) - an organization dedicated to the establishment of an independent state for Palestinians in the Middle East. |
| Camp David Accords | The first signed agreement between Israel and an Arab country, in which Egyptian president Anwar Sadat recognized Israel as a legitimate state and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. |
| Oslo Peace Accords | An agreement in 1993 in which Israeli prime minister Rabin granted Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. |
| Taliban | Conservative Islamic group that took control of Afghanistan after the Soviet Union withdrew it troops; driven from power by U.S. forces in December, 2001, because of its harboring of suspected terrorists. |
| Four Modernizations | A set of goals adopted by the Chinese Deng Xiaoping in the late 20th century, involving progress in agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology. |
| Apartheid | A South African policy of complete legal separation of the races, including the banning of all social contacts between blacks and whites. |
| Dissidents | An opponent of a government's policies or actions. |
| Glasnost | A Soviet policy of openness to the free flow of ideas and information, introduced in 1985 by Mikhail Gorbachev. |
| Perestroika | A restructuring of the Soviet economy to permit more local decision making, begun by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. |
| Commonwealth of Independent States | a loose association of former Soviet republics that was formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union |
| Tiananmen Square | A huge public space in Beijing, China; in 1989, the site of a student uprising in support of democratic reforms. |
| Proliferation | A growth or spread - especially the spread of nuclear weapons to nations that do not currently have them. |
| Universal Declaration of Human Rights | A 1948 statement in which the United Nations declared that all human beings have rights to life, liberty, and security. |
| Terrorism | The use of force or threats to frighten people or governments to change their policies. |
| Free Trade | Commerce between nations without economic restrictions or barriers (such as tariffs) |