State Building, Expansion, and Conflict, 1900 to Present (Part 2) Flashcards
~Cold War
● Most of the world was divided into hostile camps, led by the US and the USSR
● Resulted in a nuclear arms race and the creation of massive military-industrial complexes that still operate today
● State of rivalry that came to exist between the US and the USSR
~Decolonization
● Deprived the European powers of their empires
● Sometimes through peaceful negotiation
● Sometimes through violent separation
● Dozens of new nations were formed in Asia, Africa and the Pacific
~Al-Qaeda terrorist attack
● September 11, 2001
● Began a new global struggle
● The US-led war on terror, which sparked wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more generally sharpened tensions between the West and the Islamic world
● Masterminded by Osama bin Laden
~United Nations (UN)
● Came into being at war’s end and was designed to be stronger and more durable than the League of Nations
~Yalta Conference
● A key wartime summit in early 1945 to transform Eastern Europe into a Soviet sphere of influence
● Disagreements arose between the Soivets and the Anglo-Americans
~Bretton Woods system
● Soviets refused to take part in it
● Created by the Anglo-Americans to facilitate free trade after the war
~Non-aligned movement
● Formed in 1961, tahnks largely to major players like Gamal Nasser of Egypt, President Sukarno of Indonesia, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana
● Eventually came to include 120 states, although formal cooperation among them was not extensive
● Many members ended up aligning with one superpower or another
~Arms race
● The Cold War gave birth to the largest arms race
● Complete with nuclear arsenals, and while the US and USSR neve went to war with each other, an estimated 50 million people died in the dozens of small and medium-size conflicts that were ofught worldwide during the Cold War
~Iron curtain
● Descent of Soviet power over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania (until 1961), and eastern hal fo Germany
● Appeared poised to exapnd into Iran, Turkey and Greece, which would have brough the USSR closer to the oil fields of the Middle East and vital waterway of the easter Meidterranean
~Containment
● The US strategy divised by the diplomat George Kennan
● Contain communism
~Truman Doctrine
● US committed politically to containment in 1947
● Pledged assistance to Greece and Turkey and any and all countries whose political stability is threatened by communism
~Marshall Plan
● Pumped more than $13 billion of aid and investment into a Europe in dire need of reconstruction
● Containment
● Reduce economic desperation, made the spread of communism less likely
~Berlin Blockade of 1948
● Soviets suddenly cut off highway and rail traffic between West Berlin and the western half of Germany
● Easy for the Soviets to stop ground transport without provoking violence, but when the US began to fly airplanes through Soviet-controlled airspace to West Berlin, Stalin faced a choice: allow the flights to continue or shoot the airplanes down and start an actual war
● The Soviets backed down, seeming to validate hte containment strategy
~North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
● The US committed militarily to the Cold War in 1949
● A strategic alliance that bound America to Canada, Britain and nine other European states, and whose membership steadily grew over time
~Warsaw Pact
● The Soviets created their own militay bloc to oppose NATO
~First Soviet atomic-bomb test
● Erased America’s edge in military technolgoy in 1949
~Communist victory in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
● Rbought Mao Tse-tung to power as a new ally of the USSR
● China’s Nationalist regime fled to Taiwan, which remains non-communist to this day, ahotugh the PRC claims it as its own
~Korean War (1950-1953)
● Encouraged by Mao and supported in a morelimited way by Stalin, the comunist northern part of Korea attempted to conquer the southern half, which was defended by a UN army led by the US
● Containment, but for potentially hgiher stakes than in Berlin
● Confined to the peninsula
~Domino principle
● The belief that if one country in a region fell to comunism, the rest would too
● America’s involvement were based on this
~Third World countries
● Less developed and/or newly decolonized nations
● Many sought to remain neutral or unaligned
● Most were open to superpower influence, as were national-liberation movements worldwide
~Proxy wars
● Fighting a war by using proxy
● Korean War
● Vietname War
~Cuban Revolution (1959)
● Heightened tensions by placeing a communist regime and Soveit ally less than 100 miles off the US coast
~Vietnam wars (1945-1975)
● Began with the liberation of Indochina from French colonization and continued with the division of Vietnam
● After France’s defeat in 1954, America attempted to prop up the unpopulat southern regime against invastion by the communist north
● The US effort took a sharp turn for the worse in 1968 and ended with withdrawal in 1973, opening hte way for communist victory in 1975
~Nikita Khrushchev
● Less hard-line leader replacing Stalin after his death in 1953
~Suez Crisis of 1956
● Britian, France and Israel reacted to Egypt’s nationalization fo the Suez Canal with a military invastion, the Ameircans, seeking to avert a wider Middle Eastern war, cooperated with the Soviets against their own allies, forcing htem to withdraw from Egypt
~Hungarian uprising
● In 1956, Hungary attempted to reform its communist regim and restore ties with the West
● USSR intervened and sparked a Hugnarian uprising that Khrushchev brutally supressed
~Berlin Wall
● Most tangible embodiment of the iron curtain
● Soviets built this in 1961, angered by the flight of AMerican U-2 planes over the USSR
~Cuban Missile Crisis
● Khrushchev attempted to install nuclear missles in Cuba
● In October, 1962, JFK successfully countered Khrushchev’s move with a naval blockade of Cuba
● Brought the superpoers closest to nucelar war
~Leonic Brezhnev
● More authoritarian but less erratic Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in 1964
● Cuban Missle Crisis played a key role in the forced retirement
~Prague Spring
● In 1968, Brezhnev reaffirmed the Soviet sphere of influence in EUorpe by sending Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia to put down the pro-reform Proague Spring movement
● he justified this invastion with Brezhnev doctrine
~Brezhnev doctrine
● Asserting the USSR’s right to protect communism in Eastern Europe
~Strategic parity
● Each had roughly the same quantity of weapons
● Each had developed hte nuclear triad
~Nuclear triad
● The ability to drop nuclear bombs from airplanes, launch nuclear warheads on interncontinental ballistic missles (ICBMs) and fire nuclear missiles from submarines
~Deterrence
● Nuclear weapons were too destructive to contemplate using except under extreme circumstances
● Mutually assured destruction
~Mutually assured destruction (MAD)
● As long as each side remained convinced that rash action would destroy it as wellas its enemy, both sides would avoid doinganything that might trigger a serious crisis
● Viewed paradoxically by a number of strategists as a way to preserve peace between the superpowers
~Economic cost of Cold War
● Eisenhower warmed of the permanent domination fo the uS economy by a military-industrial complex
● Khrushchev in the USSR complained about weapons as “metal-eaters” devouring resoruces htat could be put to better use
~Anti-nuclear movement
● By the 1960s and 1970s
● Formed in Europe and Norht America, protesting the expense of nuclear weapons, the inherent dangers they posed, and hte environmental and human damage cuased by nuclear-weapon testing
● Led by Committe for Nuclear Disarmamnet (CND) and Greenpeace
~Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
● Not strictly anti-nuclear
● Has stirven since 1945 to educate the public about hte daners of nucear weapons, with every issue featuring a doomsday clock to show how close to midnight (nuclear war) the world is at any given point
~Space race
● Associated with hyperpatriotic pride and military rivalry
● USSR put the first human-mad object into space (1957) and lauched hte first successful human space flight (1961)
●US accomplished hte first moon landing in 1969
~Detente
● A more peaceful phase between 1969 and 1979
● USSR was motivated by fears of Sino-Soviet split
● US war wearied by the Vietnam conflict and weakened by the global recession of hte 1970s
~Sino-Soviet splie
● China and USSR grew increasingly hostile
● Nixon visited China in 1972, as part of his skillful exploitation of the split
~Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968-1969)
● Signed the Cold War’s first substantial arms-control agreements
- Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (1972)
● Joined forced in space, during the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975
~Soviet invastion of Afghanistan (1979)
● Animosity resumed betwen US and USSR
● Soviet’s puspoe was to safeguard against Islamic fundamentalism, but seemed to threaten the oil supplies of hte Middlee East
~Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979)
● Another point of tension
● Soviets supported it
~Mikhail Gorbachev
● A liberal reformer who took over USSR in 1985
● He was unwilling to use force to prop up Eastern Europe’s communist revimes and he realized as well that the inefficient Soviet system could no longer afford to kep up with the arms race or continue fighting in Afghanistan
~Fall of the Berlin War
● Symbolizes the end of Cold War in November 1989
● Reunification fo Germany followed in 1990
~Anti-Soviet nationalism
● Surged upward among the USSR’s non-RUssian ethnic minorities
● USSR itself collpased in late 1991
~Decolonization and national liberation
● Dozens of new nations came into being, having attained freedom from their imperial amsters between the 1940s and the 1970s
● Represented an astrounding shift in the balance of global power away from Europe and toward the rest of hte world
~Bandung Conference 1955
● Hosted by Indonesia
● Brought together 29 nations, most of them recently decolonized, that were interested in staying neutral during the Cold War and opposing imperialism or neocolonizalism of any kind
● Helped to give birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
~Sovietization of Eastern Europe
● Followed quickly after WWII
● Consisting of the industrilization and naitonalization fo the economy, the collectivization of agriculture, and installation fo secret polic forces and prsion camps
● Both Eastern Europe and USSR recovered form the war quickly and the region enjoyed substantial economic growth between the early 1950s and early 1970s
~Social welfare systems
● Provided educcation, medical care, pensions, and other basic services to all citizens
~Chernobyl disaster of 1986
● An example of catastrophic caused by half a century of careless nad unregulated industrialization in East Europe
~De-Stalinization
● Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began this with his secret speech of 1956 which criticized Stalin’s purges
● Refomrs were sporadic and limited and they were scaled back by Dkrushchev’s more dictatorial replacement, Leonic Brezhnev
~Brezhnev stagnation
● In the 1970s, as Western Europe suffered through its own economic criss, the Soviet bloc entered a steady economic and administrative decline
~Dissident movment
● At the same time of Brezhnev stagnation, dissident movements began to arise throughout the region
● Kept firmly udner control for the time being
● Only in the 1980s would real change make itself felt
~Middle or third way capitlism
● Blending capitalism and elements of socialism
● Invovled nationalizing certain sectors of hte economy, typically transport, communications, or utilities
~Economic union/European Coal and Steel Community
● Long process that began with the 1952 birth of hte European Coal and Steel Community (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and West Germany)
● Took shape in 1957-1958 when the same nations formed the European Econoic Community (EEC)
~European Economic Comunity (EEC)
● Eliminate tariffs and allow the freer movement of goods and services
● Brtian, Ireland, and Denmark joined in 1973
● Greece, Spain and Portugal were admitted in the 1980s
~European Union (EU)
● By the mid-1990s, EEC reconstituted itself as EU with 15 members
● Many members of the EEC/EU also participated in the NATO alliance
~1968 protests
● With May’s Paris riots by students and workers standinga longside the Prague Spring as Europe’s most famous and msot disruptive
● Generational chagne, combined with discontent over the Cold War and wars of decolonization made Euorpe uvlnerable ot the globalw ave of protests
~Terrorism
● Arose in the 1960s and 1970s as a persistent problem, sometimes as a manifestation of left-wing extremism
- Italy’s Red Brigades, who kidnapped and killed the prime minister in 1976
● Sometimes as a strategy pursued by separatist movements
- Basque ETA, fighting to be rid of Spanish rule
- Irish Republican Army (IRA), a Catholic paramilitary trying to wrest mostly Protestant Northern Ireland from British rule and unite it with the Republic of Ireland
~Global economic crisis of the 1970s
● Stagnation–slow growth combined with inflation
● Costs of Europe’s social welfare systems became harder to sustain
~Free-market policies
● Retreating in part from the social welfare systems of the past, defying labro unions, and privatizing many state-run sectors of the economy
● RIght-wing conservatives pursue this policies
- Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Helmut Kohl in West Germany
- Even France’s first socialist president, Francois Mitterand was compelled to adopt austeiry measures of this sort
~Solidarity
● Trade union in Poland led by Lech Walesa
● Spearheaded a decade-long protest movement that united workers, intellectuals, and Catholic clergy, despite being driven underground after 1981
~Pope John Paul II
● Orginially from Poland
● Did much support anti-Soviet agitation in Eastern Euorpe
~Perestroika
● Restructuring the economic system and allowing limited capitalism
● Similar to what Dng Xiaoping was attempting in Communist China
● One of Gorbachev’s reform effort
● Failed because he did not pursue economic change aggressively enough
~Glasnost
● Openness, emaning greater freedom of opinion and the media
● One of Gorbachev’s reform efofrt
● Allowed public discontent to undermine him when things went awry
~Turkey, Iran and Israel
● Turkey and Iran ontinued the programs of secularism and modernization that they had begun during the interwar period
● New state of Isral, foudned as a Jewish homeland in 1948, not only did the same but also democratized
~Organization of Petroluem Exporting Countries (OPEC)
● Foudned in 1960
● Consists largely of states from the Middle East
~Islamic fundamentalism
● Hindered modernization and democratization
● Negatively affected the status of women and increased tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslim
~Arab-israli conflict
● Diplomatically divdied the entire region and gave rise to persistent violence nad terorism
~Gamal Nasser
● Defied the West by seizing control of foreign-owned industries and businesses
● Nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956
● Temporarily strnegthened ties with the USSR, whose advisers rbought technology and weaponry to Egypt and assisted with constructing the monumental Aswan High Dam
~Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak
● Those ruling after Nasser drew closer tides with the US
● Among Arab leaders, the first to recognized Irael in 1978
● Both men’s concerns about rising Islamic fundamentalism persuaded them to continue Nasser’s tradition of authoritarian rule
~Pan-Arabism
● Nasswer promoted hte ideology
● The notion that Arab identity transcends national boundaries left over form Ottoman and European imperialism
● Arabs should be united under a single state
~United Arab Republic
● nasser tried to form it with nations like Iraq and Syria
● Ex of Pan-Arabism
~Muammar Gaddafi of Libya
● Lao attempted pan-Arabism but except in the case of hte tiny United Arab Emirates, such schemes have always collapsed
~Arab League
● many states, currently more than 20, have been joined since 1945
● An influential regional association
~Establishment of Palestine
● British who took custody of Palestine after the collapse of Ottoman power there, announced hteir support for such a paln in Balfour Declaration o 1917 but dlayed their decision during the 1920s and 1930s to avoid Arab unrest
● Holocause created enough international sympathy for the partition of Palestine to go forward
~Six-Day War (1967) and Yom Kippur War (1973)
● Military action ont he part of Arab states repeatedly eell short
● Two notable examples
● Each time, Israel, with superbly trained, highly motinvated armed forces and strong backing form the US, dfeated Arab forces, gaining new territories with each conlifict
~Palestinian terrorism
● Palestinians themselves turned to terrorism, especially after 1964, when Yasser Arafat founded the Palestinina Liberation Organization (PLO)
~Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
● Attacks increased in frequency
● Assassination fo Israeli athlets at the Munich Summer Olympics in 1972
● PLO and other terrorist groups, such as Palestinian radicals in Hamas and Lebanon-based Shiite group Hezbollah stepped up their attacks
~Camp David accords of 1978
● When Anwar Sadat of Egypt encouraged by Jimmy Carter, agreed to recognize Israel in exchange for hte return of the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized in 1967
● Other moderate Arab states follwed Egypt’s lead over the next few years
~(First) Intifada
● Thoroughout the 1980s, the Palestinian population fo Israel staged a continuous uprising
● Protesting what they considered to be apartheid-like discrimination
● Demonstrations sometimes result in bloodshed
~Oslo accords of 1993
● held out the promise of a two-state solution, but foudnered in 2000-2001, leading to a Second Intifada and continued strife
~Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
● Last of the secular, modernizing Pahlavi shah in Iran
● Governed from 1941 to 1979
● Used oil wealth to industrialize the country and opposed Islamic fundamentalism, encouraging Western dress, Western education, the unveiling of wmen and hte eradication fo Sharia law
● Authoritarian, relying on torture and secret police repression to maintain order
~Ayatollah Khomeini
● The Shiite cleric in 1979 retuned to Iran and took control while Pahlavi sough medical treatment and died of cancer
● An Islamic fundamentalist the shah had exiled years before
~Iranian Revolution
● Trasnfomred the country into an anti-Western theocracy in which an elected government came to coexist with authoritarian clerics who held read power and ecided ahed of time which candidates could run for office
~Iran ostage crisis (1979-1981)
● Damaged American prestige and permanently soured US-Iranian relations
~Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
● Caused more than half a milliont otal deaths and devastated both nations
~Saddam Hussein
● Iraq’s ruler duirng the Iran-Iraq Qar
● Hi Sunni Baath party came to power in 1979
● Originally sponsored by the US becaue of his opposition to Iran and the USSR, Hussein turned his brutaility against his own people and his enighbors
● He used oison gas, drafted teengaers for combat and targeted cvilians during hte Iran-Iraq War
● Persecuted Ira’s Kudish minority
● Invaded the oil-rich Kuwait in 1990 and appeard ready to move against Saudi Arabia
~Gulf War (1991)
● A US-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm to push Hussien out of Kuwait
● Between 1991 and Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, the international community strove to contrain Iraq and prevent its development of weapons of mass destruction
~Decolonization in Africa
● Began during the 1950s and 1960s
● Transitions ot freedom varied wildly, depending on whether the colonial power pulled out peacefully or had to be expelled by force, and also on whether they new state was able to aovid ethnic violence
~Algeian war of independence from France (1954-1962)
● Proved agonizingly violent, because the French regarded Algeria as literally part of their country and refused to part with it
● Both sides resorted to turture and violence against civilians and defeat in Algeria led ot hte fall of the Fourth Republic, which had governed France since the end of WWII
~Decolonization in sub-Saharan Africa
● Britain and France presided over relatively smooth transitions to freedom, trainint native elites nad working to minimize hte possibility of internal conflict
~Kwame Dkrumah
● Dreamed idealistically of a united Africa, peaceful and prosperious
● Key leader in Ghana that was transformed from the Gold Coast’s negotiation of freedom from Brtiain in 1957
~Kenya independence
● Jomo Kenyatta pursued nonviolence on the paht to Kenyan independence from Btiatin in 1963
● Radical Mau Mau movement killed almost 2000 people there during the 1950s
~Angola and Mozambique independence
● Both fought bitter wars of independenc from Portugal, a notoriously exploitative imperial master
● Both of these struggles (1961-1975) and (1969-1975) gave way imediately after their conclusion to lengthy civil wars between communist and non-communist forces