8. From the Cold War to the Edge of History

Question 1

Define Cold War

Answer 1

The post–World War II conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Question 2

Define Truman Doctrine

Answer 2

The 1945 American policy of preventing the spread of Communist rule.

Question 3

Define Marshall Plan

Answer 3

A 1948 American plan for providing economic aid to Europe to help it rebuild after World War II.

Question 4

Define NATO

Answer 4

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western nations, formed in 1949.

Question 5

Define dependency theory

Answer 5

The belief, formulated in Latin America in the mid-twentieth century, that development in some areas of the world locks other nations into underdevelopment.

Question 6

Define modernization theory

Answer 6

The belief, held in countries such as the United States in the mid-twentieth century, that all countries evolved in a linear progression from traditional to mature.

Question 7

Define import substitution industrialization (ISI)

Answer 7

The use of trade barriers to keep certain foreign products out of one’s country so that domestic industry can emerge and produce the same goods.

Question 8

Define liberation theology

Answer 8

A movement within the Catholic Church to support the poor in situations of exploitation that emerged with particular force in Latin America in the 1960s.

Question 9

Define Muslim League

Answer 9

Political party founded in 1906 in colonial India that advocated for a separate Muslim homeland after independence.

Question 10

Define Arab socialism

Answer 10

A modernizing, secular, and nationalist project of nation building in the Middle East aimed at economic development and the development of a strong military.

Question 11

Define Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

Answer 11

Created in 1964, a loose union of Palestinian refugee groups opposed to Israel and united in the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.

Question 12

Define Great Leap Forward

Answer 12

Mao Zedong’s acceleration of Chinese development in which industrial growth was to be based on small-scale backyard workshops run by peasants living in gigantic self-contained communes.

Question 13

Define Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Answer 13

A movement launched in 1965 by Mao Zedong that attempted to recapture the revolutionary fervor of his guerrilla struggle.

Question 14

Define Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Answer 14

A movement launched in 1965 by Mao Zedong that attempted to recapture the revolutionary fervor of his guerrilla struggle.

Question 15

Define Pan-Africanists

Answer 15

eople who, through a movement beginning in 1919, sought black solidarity and envisioned a vast self-governing union of all African peoples.

Question 16

Define cocoa holdups

Answer 16

Mass protests in Africa’s Gold Coast in the 1930s by producers of cocoa who refused to sell their beans to British firms and instead sold them directly to European and American chocolate manufacturers.

Question 17

Define National Liberation Front

Answer 17

The anticolonial movement in Algeria, which began a war against the French in 1954 and won independence in 1962.

Question 18

Define Common Market

Answer 18

The European Economic Community created in 1957.

Question 19

How did the Cold War and decolonization shape the postwar world?

Answer 19

The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union divided postwar Europe and became a long, tense standoff, the Cold War. As the Cold War took shape, three events separated by barely two years foreshadowed the changes that would take place in the world following the Second World War: the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947; the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948; and the Communist revolution in China in 1949. All had their roots in the decades preceding the Second World War — and even predating the First World War. Yet each was shaped by the war and its outcomes.

Question 20

How did religion and the legacies of colonialism affect the formation of new nations in South Asia and the Middle East after World War II?

Answer 20

The three South Asian countries created through independence from Britain and subsequent partition, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, reflected the dominant themes of cultural and economic nationalism that characterized the end of colonialism, but ethnic and religious rivalries greatly complicated their renewal and development.

Question 21

How did the Cold War shape reconstruction, revolution, and decolonization in East and Southeast Asia?

Answer 21

In Asia Japan’s defeat ended the Second World War, but other conflicts continued: nationalists in European colonies intensified their struggle for independence, and in China Nationalist and Communist armies that had cooperated against the Japanese invaders now confronted each other in a renewed civil war. In 1949 Communist forces under Mao Zedong triumphed and established the People’s Republic of China. The Communist victory in China shaped the nature of Japan’s reconstruction, as its U.S. occupiers determined that an industrially and economically strong Japan would serve as a counterweight to Mao. U.S. fear of the spread of communism drew the country into conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, intensifying the stakes in the decolonization struggle across East and Southeast Asia.

Question 22

What factors influenced decolonization in Africa after World War II?

Answer 22

By 1964 most of Africa had gained independence (Map 31.5). Only Portugal’s colonies and southern Africa remained under white minority rule, gaining their independence after long armed struggles that ended in 1975. Many national leaders saw socialism as the best way to sever colonial ties and erase exploitation within their new borders. But institutional barriers left over from the colonial era hampered these efforts: new nations inherited inefficient colonial bureaucracies, economic systems that privileged the export of commodities, and colonial educational systems intended to build servants of empire. The range of actions available to new leaders was narrowed by former colonizers’ efforts to retain their economic influence and by the political and ideological divisions of the Cold War.

Question 23

Why did populism emerge as such a powerful political force in Latin America?

Answer 23

In the decades after the Second World War, Latin American nations struggled to find a political balance that integrated long-excluded groups such as women, workers, and peasants. Populist politicians built a base of support among the urban and rural poor. They often combined charisma with promises of social change, particularly through national economic development that would create more and better job opportunities. In many cases, the conservative reaction against populists led the armed forces to seize power. Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro carved an alternative path in Cuba. Castro went beyond the reforms advocated by populists and sought an outright revolutionary transformation of Cuban society.

Question 24

Why did the world face growing social unrest in the 1960s?

Answer 24

In the 1950s and 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as both western and eastern Europe, rebounded economically from the combined strains of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The postwar return of prosperity increased living standards but did not resolve underlying tensions and conflicts.

Question 25

Define Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

Answer 25

A cartel formed in 1960 by oil-exporting countries designed to coordinate oil production and raise prices, giving those countries greater capacity for economic development and greater leverage in world affairs.

Question 26

Define petrodollars

Answer 26

The global recirculation by international banks of profits from the higher price of oil following the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

Question 27

Define neoliberalism

Answer 27

A return beginning in the 1980s to policies intended to promote free markets and the free circulation of capital across national borders.

Question 28

Define Washington Consensus

Answer 28

Policies restricting public spending, lowering import barriers, privatizing state enterprises, and deregulating markets in response to the 1980s debt crisis in Latin America.

Question 29

Define intifada

Answer 29

Beginning in 1987, a prolonged campaign of civil disobedience by Palestinian youth against Israeli soldiers; the Arabic word intifada means “shaking off.”

Question 30

Define junta

Answer 30

A government headed by a council of commanders of the branches of the armed forces.

Question 31

Define apartheid

Answer 31

The system of racial segregation and discrimination that was supported by the Afrikaner government in South Africa.

Question 32

Define African National Congress (ANC)

Answer 32

The main black nationalist organization in South Africa, led by Nelson Mandela.

Question 33

Define “Japan, Inc.”

Answer 33

A nickname from the 1970s and 1980s used to describe what some considered the unfair relationship between Japan’s business world and government.

Question 34

Define Tiananmen Square

Answer 34

The site of a Chinese student revolt in 1989 at which Communists imposed martial law and arrested, injured, or killed hundreds of students.

Question 35

Define détente

Answer 35

The progressive relaxation of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Question 36

Define perestroika

Answer 36

Economic restructuring and reform implemented by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that permitted an easing of government price controls on some goods, more independence for state enterprises, and the establishment of profit-seeking private cooperatives.

Question 37

Define glasnost

Answer 37

Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s popular campaign for government transparency and more open media.

Question 38

Define Solidarity

Answer 38

Led by Lech Wałęsa, an independent Polish trade union organized in 1980 that worked for the rights of workers and political reform.

Question 39

Define European Union (EU)

Answer 39

An economic and political alliance of twelve European nations formed in 1993 that has since grown to include twenty-eight European nations.

Question 40

What were the short-term and long-term consequences of the OPEC oil embargo?

Answer 40

In 1973 war erupted again between Israel and its neighbors Egypt and Syria. The conflict became known both as the Yom Kippur War because it coincided with the Jewish religious holiday of atonement, and as the Ramadan War because it occurred during the Muslim month of fasting. Armed with advanced weapons from the Soviet Union, Egyptian and Syrian armies came close to defeating Israel before the U.S. government airlifted sophisticated arms to Israel. Israel counterattacked, reaching the outskirts of both Cairo and Damascus before the fighting ended.

Question 41

How did war and revolution reshape the Middle East?

Answer 41

The 1973 Yom Kippur War had a lasting effect across the Middle East. Egypt and Syria had again been defeated, but Israelis also felt more vulnerable after the war. The oil embargo empowered oil-exporting nations like Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iraq. The Middle East faced deepening divisions, which added to the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. The region was reshaped by the increasing wealth of oil producers relative to other Arab states. Rising Islamic militancy led to revolution in Iran, as well as religious challenges to the rule of secular, modernizing dictatorships in countries like Egypt.

Question 42

What effect did the Cold War and debt crisis have on Latin America?

Answer 42

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States financed and armed military dictatorships to suppress any dissent that might lead to communism and to secure U.S. influence in the region. Many elected governments were toppled in military coups that brought right-wing military dictatorships to power with U.S. military and financial support.

Question 43

How did white-minority rule end in southern Africa?

Answer 43

The racially segregated system of apartheid in South Africa was part of a region of white-minority rule that included Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, the government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia, and South African control of the former German colony of Namibia. Wars of independence in Angola and Mozambique eroded the buffer of neighboring white-minority governments around South Africa, and domestic and foreign pressure brought a political transition to majority rule in Namibia and South Africa in the 1990s.

Question 44

How have East and South Asian nations pursued economic development, and how have political regimes shaped those efforts?

Answer 44

China, Japan, and the countries that became known as the “Asian Tigers” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) experienced fantastic economic growth in the last decades of the twentieth century. The Chinese Communist Party managed a transition in which it maintained tight political control amid liberalization and economic growth. Japan’s economy stagnated in the 1990s and struggled to recover amid growing competition from its neighbors. In South Asia tensions between India and Pakistan persisted.

Question 45

How did decolonization and the end of the Cold War change Europe?

Answer 45

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the United States and the Soviet Union pursued a relaxation of Cold War tensions that became known as détente (day-TAHNT). But détente stalled when Brezhnev’s Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to save an unpopular Marxist regime.

Question 46

Define middle powers

Answer 46

Countries with significant economic influence that became increasingly assertive regional leaders after the Cold War.

Question 47

Define megacities

Answer 47

Cities with populations of 5 million people or more.

Question 48

Define bazaar economy

Answer 48

An economy with few salaried jobs and an abundance of tiny, unregulated businesses such as peddlers and pushcart operators.

Question 49

Define multinational corporations

Answer 49

Business firms that operate in a number of different countries and tend to adopt a global rather than a national perspective.

Question 50

Define global warming

Answer 50

The consensus view of an overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists that hydrocarbons produced through the burning of fossil fuels have caused a greenhouse effect that has increased global temperatures over time.

Question 51

Define feminization of poverty

Answer 51

The issue that those living in extreme poverty are disproportionately women.

Question 52

Define green revolution

Answer 52

Beginning in the 1950s, the increase in food production stemming from the introduction of high-yielding wheat, hybrid seeds, and other advancements.

Question 53

Define digital divide

Answer 53

The gap between levels of access to computing, Internet, and telecommunications between rich and poor regions and populations.

Question 54

Does the contemporary world reflect the “end of history”?

Answer 54

In 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet system disintegrated, a historian wrote a provocative article called “The End of History?” in which he argued that the collapse of the Soviet system meant the triumph of liberalism as a political and economic philosophy. Amid the transitions to democracy from Russia and eastern Europe to Latin America, political leaders embraced liberalism as the ideology of government and of economics. This was the “triumph of the West, of the Western idea . . . in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”1 Was liberalism the ultimate stage of human political and economic development?

Question 55

How have migration and the circulation of capital and technology continued to shape the world?

Answer 55

Much of the history in this textbook is driven by the circulation of peoples over great distances. Migration continues to be one of the great engines of history, though its experience exposes one of the major contradictions in the way liberalization has been conducted: governments have pressed for the free circulation of goods and capital, but have sought to limit the movement of people across borders.

Question 56

What challenges did social reformers address at the turn of the twenty-first century?

Answer 56

Just as nineteenth-century social reformers embraced the cause of ending slavery, modern social reformers have sought to end global inequality, racism, and sexism and to expand human rights. Social movements played a critical role in the victory of the democratic movements in Latin America and Europe and the end of the apartheid system in South Africa.

Question 57

How have science and technology kept pace with population change?

Answer 57

Since 1950 the world’s population has increased from 2.5 billion people to over 7 billion. This population growth has been matched by increasing demand for food and has placed growing strains on natural resources. Advances in agriculture and medicine have helped offset this challenge, while technological innovations in areas such as transportation and communications have increased the complexity of interactions among the world’s growing population.