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Cold War terminology

  • Western BlocOn the 5th of March 1946, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood in Fulton, Missouri to declare that an iron curtain had descended across the…
  • McCarthyismOn the 21st of March 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9835 into law. This document required every federal civil-service employee to…
  • Three-world modelThe year 1947 marked the beginning of a global struggle between two superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union stood as opposing forces after World…
  • Warsaw PactThe Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, hosted a signing ceremony on the 14th of May 1955. Eight nations gathered to establish the Treaty of Friendship…
  • Third WorldAlfred Sauvy published an article in the French magazine L'Observateur on the 14th of August 1952. He used the phrase third world to describe countries…
  • Sputnik 1On the 17th of December 1954, chief Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev proposed a developmental plan for an artificial satellite to the Minister of the…
  • Second WorldIn 1961, a map of Europe showed political lines drawn in ink that would define the next three decades. The Second World emerged as one of three global…
  • Deterrence theoryIn 1966, Thomas Schelling published a book titled Arms and Influence that redefined how scholars understood the use of threats in international relations.
  • Iron CurtainTheater stages in the early twentieth century installed iron safety curtains to slow the spread of fire. This literal barrier became a metaphor for political…
  • First WorldIn the late 1940s, the United Nations introduced a new way to categorize nations based on their political alignment. This system emerged from the global…
  • We will bury youNikita Khrushchev stood before Western ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow on the 18th of November 1956. The room held envoys from twelve NATO…
  • Strategic Defense InitiativeOn the 23rd of March 1983, President Ronald Reagan stood before a national television audience and declared that nuclear weapons must be rendered impotent…
  • Domino theoryIn 1945, the Soviet Union brought most of the countries of eastern Europe and Central Europe into its influence as part of the post-World War II new…