| Term | Definition |
| United Nations | The General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat are the three parts of what. |
| Third World | group caught in the middle of the Cold War |
| Cold War | war fought with words, diplomats, and ideology |
| USA | leader of the "free world" during the Cold War |
| USSR | leader of the "communist bloc" during the Cold War |
| Satellite Nations | nations supposedly independent but technically under the dominance of another |
| iron curtain | a political barrier that isolated the people of Eatern Europe after WWII, restricting their ability to travel outside the region |
| Marshall Plan | the European recovery program following WWII that extended credits amounting to $20 billion over the next four years in an attemot to limit the growth of Communism |
| COMECON | the Soviet response to the US's Marshall Plan. |
| Berlin Airlift | airlift in 1948 that supplied food and fuel to citizens of west Berlin when the Russians closed off land access to Berlin |
| NATO | an international organization created in 1949 by the North Atlantic Treaty for purposes of collective security |
| Warsaw Pact | An alliance between the Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations. This was in response to the NATO |
| EEC | an international organization of European countries formed after World War II to reduce trade barriers and increase cooperation among its members |
| peaceful coexistance | the two sides in the Cold War decide to cooperate in such areas as space, trade, education, and science |
| Berlin Wall | a wall separating East and West Berlin built by East Germany in 1961 to keep citizens from escaping to the West |
| British Commonwealth of Nations | loose organization of British colonies that disenegrated after WWII |
| Red Brigades | a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organizaiton that arose out of a student protest movement in the late 1960s |
| five year plan | Stalin's economic policy to rebuild the Soviet economy after WWI. tried to improve heavy industry and improve farm output, but resulted in famine |
| great leap forward | a five-year economic plan that collectivized farms in China and put them into communes |
| Cultural Revolution | a radical reform in China initiated by Mao Tse-tung3.. in 1965 and carried out largely by the Red Guard |
| Red Guards | The youths who led Mao's Cultural Revolution. Wore red arm bands and carried his book. Terrorized Chinese citizens and determined who went to camps. |
| Gang of Four | the name given to a leftist political faction of four Chinese Communist party officials (Mao Zedong's wife and three of his coworkers). |
| limited warfare | strong, competing nation states fighting small, limited wars to gain marginal advantage over neighbor |
| 26th of July movement | revolutionary group of Cuban exiles organized by Castro |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | the 1962 confrontation bewteen US and the Soviet Union over Soviet missiles in Cuba |
| Sandinistas | A group of reform-minded revolutionaries that included a large number of women and students who over threw the Nicaraguan government in 1979 |
| Eisenhower Doctine | said that the U.S. would defend the Middle East against any attack by any communist country |
| Yom Kippur War | Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in October 1973 (on Yom Kippur) |
| OPEC | an organization of countries formed in 1961 to agree on a common policy for the production and sale of petroleum |
| Camp David Accords | agreement calling for Israel to return all land in the Sinai in exchange for Egyptian recognition of Israel's sovereignty. |
| PLO | a political movement uniting Palestinian Arabs in an effort to create an independent state of Palestine |
| apartheid | a social policy or racial segregation involving political and economic and legal discrimination against non-whites; prominent in S. Africa |
| ANC | organization that wanted to end apartheid in South Africa |
| Viet Cong | Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam |
| Ho Chi Minh Trail | A network of jungle paths winding from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam, used as a military route by North Vietnam to supply the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. |
| Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | allowed the President to take all necassay measures to repel armed attack or prevent further aggression |
| Tet Offensive | surprise attacks on cities all over South Vietnam |
| Vietnamization | policy of equipping and training of the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves |
| hydrogen bomb | a nuclear weapon that releases atomic energy by union of light (hydrogen) nuclei at high temperatures to form helium |
| detente | relaxation of tensions between the United States and its two major Communist rivals, the Soviet Union and China |
| SALT I | the first treaty between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics resulting from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks |
| SALT II | the second treaty between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics resulting from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks |
| Reagan Doctrine | a US promise to support anticommunists attempting to overthrow governments backed by the Soviet Union |
| Contras | Guerrillas who fought against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua |
| Strategic Defense Initiative | Reagan's Star Wars defense system to shoot down missiles while they're in space |
| Solidarity | Polish labor movement that called for emancipation from the Warsaw Pact; in 1981 its leaders were imprisoned and the Soviet Union asserted authority |
| INF Treaty | Reagan and Gorbachev signed this treaty, which provided for the dismantling of all intermediate range nuclear weapons in Russia and all of Europe |
| Perestoika | a policy of USSR leader Gorbechev to revitalize the economics by opening it up to more free enterprise |
| Glasnost | a policy of the Soviet government allowing freer discussion of social problems |