Column 4 Flashcards
Containment
Containment embodies American diplomat George Kennan’s strategy to deal with the spread of communism and Soviet influence in the mid-20th century by propping up weakened states with economic support and developing a strong military as a show of force. Ultimately, even Kennan rejected the effectiveness of this policy as it accidentally encouraged Soviets to increase their efforts to influence developing countries to foster potential allies.
World Bank
Third World
Third World was a term coined by French Demographer Alfred Sauvy in the 1950s which described countries that represented the majority of the world population but were appressed. By the 1960s, the term encompassed large blocks of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The oppressed countries tried to find a way between capitalism and communism after they experience colonial domination.
Arab Spring
Arab Spring was a movement in which protests called for the end of repression and the establishment of democracy in Arab countries. Mohammed Bouazizi triggered the movement in 2010 when he set himself on fire to protest police harassment. Arab Spring started in Tunisia & Egypt then spread throughout the Middle East. It was one of the first movements that spread through a grassroots campaign on social media; which contributed to the US intervention on the issue.
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square was a plaza in Beijing, China where 100,000 Chinese citizens gathered together in 1989 to protest the ban on assembling. The army fired on their own people killing hundreds. The protest showed a push for democracy in China because widening gap between rich and poor, as well as government corruption on top of ban on assembling.
European Union
The European Union as an international body organized after World War 2 as an attempt at reconciliation between Germany and rest of Europe. It aimed to forge closer industrial cooperation. The current name was established in 1993 and composed of many European countries such as the UK, Germany, and France. Unfortunately, the EU increased the divide between rich and poor countries by favoring countries who could produce more advanced goods, but was successful in globalizing the economy.
International Monetary Fund
The IMF was an agency founded in 1944 to help restore financial order in Europe and Third World countries, such as propping up currency in Ghana, to revive international trade and to offer financial support to third world governments. This was a form of new age colonialism because it intruded into state’s automony and most directly benefited the West.
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact of 1955, established by Joseph Stalin, was a military treaty between the Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations that favored communism in response to the Marshall Plan that pushed containment. The pact showed the military and government might of communism and launched the Cold War & the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro was a Cuban Communist leader who became increasingly radical as he consolidated power, redistribution of land and nationalized industry. He seized power of Cuba in 1959 then aligned with the SU after the failed CIA invasion (?) and gave Stalin a crucial ally that was so close to the US. Communist Cuba could be considered a “defeat” for anti-communist powers in the Cold War because communism arose just 70 miles from the US.
Apartheid
Apartheid in South Africa was an extreme form of racial segregation that stripped Africans, Indians and people of Color of their few political rights and outlawed any forms of racial mixing. It was led by the White Afrikaner National Party, who rose in power in 1948. It was another form of colonialism and white man’s rule, just without the direct oversight of an empire.
OPEC
