Curated category
Cold War terminology
- Western BlocOn the 5th of March 1946, Winston Churchill stood in Fulton, Missouri, and told the world that an "iron curtain has descended across the Continent." That…
- McCarthyismMcCarthyism begins, in many ways, not with the senator whose name it bears, but with a single sheet of paper. On the 9th of February 1950, Joseph McCarthy…
- Three-world modelThe three-world model sorted every nation on Earth into one of three categories, and for decades it shaped how politicians, journalists, and ordinary people…
- Warsaw PactThe Warsaw Pact was born on the 14th of May 1955, eight days after West Germany joined NATO. Its founding declaration accused a remilitarized Western Germany…
- Third WorldThird World is a term born in crisis, coined not by a politician but by a demographer named Alfred Sauvy. On the 14th of August, 1952, his article appeared…
- Sputnik 1Sputnik 1, a polished metal sphere barely 58 centimetres across, crossed the sky on the 4th of October 1957 and changed everything.
- Second WorldThe Second World was one of three categories that Cold War strategists used to divide all of humanity. At its core sat the Soviet Union, founded in 1922, and…
- 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 CurtainFrom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Winston Churchill spoke those words on the 5th of…
- First WorldFirst World is a geopolitical label that carries more history than most people realize. It did not begin as a measure of wealth or living standards.
- 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 InitiativeThe Strategic Defense Initiative arrived in the public imagination on the 23rd of March 1983, when President Ronald Reagan looked into a camera and asked…
- 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…