Ch 31: The Cold War and Decolonization, 1945-1975 Flashcards
What was the iron curtain?
Winston Churchill’s term for Cold War division between the East and West, especially generally between the US and its allies in NATO countries on one side and the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries on the other.
What was the Cold War?
the state of political tension and military rivalry between the US and their allies and the USSR and their allies
What was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?
military alliance established by US and W. Europe
“North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), military alliance established in 1949 that sought to create a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II. Following the end of the Cold War, NATO was reconceived as a “cooperative-security” organization. It has 32 member states.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-Atlantic-Treaty-Organization
What was the Warsaw Pact?
military alliance created by USSR
“Warsaw Pact, (May 14, 1955–July 1, 1991) treaty establishing a mutual-defense organization (Warsaw Treaty Organization) composed originally of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. (Albania withdrew in 1968, and East Germany did so in 1990.) The treaty (which was renewed on April 26, 1985) provided for a unified military command and for the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the other participating states.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Pact
What was the United Nations?
international peace-keeping organization
“United Nations (UN), international organization established on October 24, 1945. The United Nations (UN) was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. Headquartered in New York City, the UN also has regional offices in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. Its official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Nations
What were the 2 main bodies of the UN?
- General Assembly: members from all states
- Security Council: 5 permanent members: China, France, GB, US, USSR
What power did the Security Council have?
veto power
“[The 5 nations most responsible for the creation of the United Nations] were granted the special status of Permanent Member States at the Security Council, along with a special voting power known as the “right to veto”. It was agreed by the drafters that if any one of the five permanent members cast a negative vote in the 15-member Security Council, the resolution or decision would not be approved.
All five permanent members have exercised the right of veto at one time or another. If a permanent member does not fully agree with a proposed resolution but does not wish to cast a veto, it may choose to abstain, thus allowing the resolution to be adopted if it obtains the required number of nine favourable votes.” https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/voting-system
What did a flood of new members to the UN after the decolonization of Africa cause?
A voting majority that was more concerned with poverty, racial discrimination, and the struggle against imperialism than the Cold War.
Western powers increasingly disregarded the General Assembly.
What did the World Bank do?
provided funds for reconstructing Europe and helping needy countries after the war
What was the Marshall Plan?
US provided billions of $ in aid to friendly European countries, mostly in the form of food, raw materials, and other goods
“Marshall Plan, (April 1948–December 1951), U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive.
The United States feared that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation of the post-World War II period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe. On June 5, 1947, in an address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall advanced the idea of a European self-help program to be financed by the United States[.]” https://www.britannica.com/event/Marshall-Plan
What was the European Community?
enlarged alliance between European countries
“European Community (EC), former association designed to integrate the economies of Europe. The term also refers to the “European Communities,” which originally comprised the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC; dissolved in 2002), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In 1993 the three communities were subsumed under the European Union (EU). The EC, or Common Market, then became the principal component of the EU. It remained as such until 2009, when the EU legally replaced the EC as its institutional successor.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-Community-European-economic-association
What did prosperity cause in W. Europe?
Increased wages, government spending on health care and unemployment, increase in mass consumer society
What was growth in the Soviet Union like?
rapid at first, then control of the economy became less efficient
What was the Truman Doctrine?
offered military aid to help Turkey and Greece resist Soviet military pressure and subversion
“With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/truman-doctrine
What led to the creation of the Warsaw Pact?
Western powers’ decision to let West Germany rearm within the limits set by NATO
“The immediate occasion for the Warsaw Pact was the Paris agreement among the Western powers admitting West Germany to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Warsaw Pact was, however, the first step in a more systematic plan to strengthen the Soviet hold over its satellites, a program undertaken by the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin after their assumption of power early in 1955.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Pact
What defeated the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade by the USSR in East Germany?
airlifts of food and fuel
“Berlin blockade, international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, in 1948–49, to force the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin.
[…]
On June 26 the United States and Britain began to supply the city with food and other vital supplies by air. They also organized a similar “airlift” in the opposite direction of West Berlin’s greatly reduced industrial exports. […] Tension remained high, but war did not break out.
Despite dire shortages of fuel and electricity, the airlift kept life going in West Berlin for 11 months, until on May 12, 1949, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade. The airlift continued until September 30” https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-blockade
World War II left who in control of Korea?
Soviet troops in control north of 38th parallel, Americans in control of South
What caused the Korean War?
North Korea invaded South Korea
Expansionist intentions on the part of the Communists in the North lead them, with the assent of the Soviets, to invade the South on 25 June 1950.
What was the resolution of the Korean War?
truce, but no peace treaty concluded it
“By spring 1951, UN forces had recovered sufficiently, and the conflict settled into a protracted war of attrition that ended after 2 years of negotiations produced, in July 1953, an armistice that restored the status quo antebellum.” https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2421435/more-afraid-of-your-friends-than-the-enemy-coalition-dynamics-in-the-korean-war/
status quo antebellum: state of affairs before the war, in this case the 38th parallel separating the two countries.
How did Japan benefit from the Korean War?
massive purchasing of supplies and spending by US stimulated the economy
Whose coalition fought the French with help from PRC in Vietnam?
Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist coalition, the Viet Minh
Where did Viet Minh take over?
North Vietnam
JFK decided to support South Vietnam and engaged in what?
Vietnam War
“As the situation continued to deteriorate, Kennedy sent two key advisers, economist Walt W. Rostow and former army chief of staff Maxwell Taylor, to Vietnam in the fall of 1961 to assess conditions. The two concluded that the South Vietnamese government was losing the war with the Viet Cong and had neither the will nor the ability to turn the tide on its own. They recommended a greatly expanded program of military assistance, including such items as helicopters and armoured personnel carriers, and an ambitious plan to place American advisers and technical experts at all levels and in all agencies of the Vietnamese government and military. They also recommended the introduction of a limited number of U.S. combat troops, a measure the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been urging as well.
[…]
[The] administration proceeded with vigour and enthusiasm to carry out the expansive program of aid and guidance proposed in the Rostow-Taylor report. A new four-star general’s position—commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (USMACV)—was established in Saigon to guide the military assistance effort. The number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, less than 800 throughout the 1950s, rose to about 9,000 by the middle of 1962.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War/The-U-S-role-grows
Kennedy similarly increased US support, short of the commitment of combat troops, until his death in 1963.
What did the 2 parts of Vietnam become united under?
The Communist government of North Vietnam.
