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Cold War Glossary
Adapted from website: history1900s.about.com/od/.../a/cwglossary.htm
ABM Anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles (rockets carrying nuclear weapons) before they reach their targets.
Afghanistan invasion 1979 The Soviet invasion of this country in 1979 effectively ended détente and brought about the boycott of the Moscow Olympics by the American team in 1980
arms race Massive military build-up, especially of nuclear weapons, by both the Soviet Union and the United States in an effort to gain military superiority.
Bay of Pigs 1961 An American-backed attempt by Cuban exiles to oust Castro. The attempt failed disastrously and humiliated President Kennedy.
brinkmanship Purposely escalating a dangerous situation to the limit (brink), while giving the impression that you are willing to go to war, in the hope of pressuring your opponents to back down.
broken arrow A nuclear bomb that is either lost, stolen, or accidentally launched that causes a nuclear accident. Though broken arrows made great movie plots throughout the Cold War, the most serious real-life broken arrow occurred on January 17, 1966 when a U.S. B-52 crashed off the coast of Spain. Though all four of the nuclear bombs aboard the B-52 were eventually recovered, radioactive material contaminated large areas around the crash site.
Castro, Fidel Cuban revolutionary leader who defied American attempts to assassinate him. He defeated the Bay of Pigs invasion and allowed Soviet nuclear missiles to be placed on Cuba, thereby, bringing about the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962.
Checkpoint Charlie A crossing point between West Berlin and East Berlin when the Berlin Wall divided the city.
Cold War The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that dominated world affairs from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, propaganda, and espionage fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons, though the threat of nuclear war was always present and occasionally came near to realization--especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis 
of 1962.
communism An economic theory in which collective ownership of property leads to a classless society. In the Soviet Union the state owned all means of production and was led by a centralized, authoritarian party. This was viewed as the antithesis of democracy in the United States.
containment Fundamental U.S. foreign policy introduced by Truman during the Cold War in which the U.S. tried to contain Communism by preventing it from spreading to other countries.
Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when President John F. Kennedy learned that Soviet nuclear missiles were being based in Cuba, he ordered a naval quarantine and demanded that the Soviet Union remove all their offensive weapons from the island. This confrontation brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. The crisis ended when the Soviets dismantled their missile installations in exchange for a U.S. agreement to discontinue efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro.
DEFCON An acronym for "defense readiness condition." The term is followed by a number (one to five) which informs the U.S. military to the severity of the threat, with DEFCON 5 representing normal, peacetime readiness to DEFCON 1 warning the need for maximum force readiness, i.e. war.
detente The relaxing of tension between the superpowers.
deterrence theory A theory that proposed a massive build-up of military and weaponry in order to threaten a destructive counter-attack to any potential attack. The threat was intended to prevent, or deter, anyone from attacking.
Domino theory The idea that was held that if one country fell to communism then others around it would soon follow
fallout shelter Underground structures, stocked with food and other supplies, that were intended to keep people safe from radioactive fallout following a nuclear attack.
first strike capability The ability of one country to launch a surprise, massive nuclear attack against another country. The goal of a first strike is to wipe out most, if not all, of the opposing country's weapons and aircraft, leaving them unable to launch a counter-attack.
Glasnost A policy promoted during the latter half of the 1980s in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in which government secrecy (which had characterized the past several decades of Soviet policy) was discouraged and open discussion and distribution of information was encouraged. The term translates to "openness" in Russian.
Gorbachev Soviet leader who came to power in 1985 and who saw the need for better relations with the West.
hotline A direct line of communication between the White House and the Kremlin, established in 1963. Often called the "red telephone."
ICBM Inter-continental ballistic missiles were missiles that could carry nuclear bombs across thousands of miles.
iron curtain A term used by Winston Churchill to describe the growing divide between western democracies and Soviet-influenced states.
Kennedy John F. Thirty-fifth president of the United States (1961-63). Kennedy was a WWII hero, senator from Massachusetts, and the youngest person ever elected president. He was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. JFK's youth and idealistic pronouncements created an optimistic mood of liberalism throughout the country and the world, despite the continuation and escalation of traditional Cold War policies against countries like Cuba and Vietnam.
Khrushchev, Nikita Soviet leader who denounced Stalin when he came to power.
Limited Test Ban Treaty Signed August 5, 1963, this treaty is a worldwide agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, or under water.
Marshall Plan A former American general who became Truman’s Secretary of State, who gave his name to a program of financial assistance aimed at strengthening Europe’s economies after WWII.
missile gap The concern within the U.S. that the Soviet Union had greatly surpassed the U.S. in its stockpile of nuclear missiles.
mutually assured destruction MAD was the guarantee that if one superpower launched a massive nuclear attack, the other would reciprocate by also launching a massive nuclear attack, and both countries would be destroyed. This ultimately became the prime deterrent against a nuclear war between the two superpowers.
Ostpolitik Willy Brandt, the West German Chancellor, tried to improve relations between East and West Germany. This was the name of the policy attached to this.
perestroika Introduced in June 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev, an economic policy to decentralize the Soviet economy. The term translates to "restructuring" in Russian
Reagan, Ronald American president who called the USSR ‘the evil empire’. Eventually, however, he oversaw the improvement in East West relations in the mid-to-late 1980s.
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States to limit the number of newly created nuclear weapons. The first negotiations extended from 1969 to 1972 and resulted in SALT I (the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) in which each side agreed to keep their strategic ballistic missile launchers at their current numbers and provided for the increase in submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) in proportion to the decrease in number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). The second round of negotiations extended from 1972 to 1979 and resulted in SALT II (the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) which provided a broad range of limitations on offensive nuclear weapons.
space race A competition between the Soviet Union and the United States to prove their superiority in technology through increasingly impressive accomplishments in space. The race to space began in 1957 when the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik.
Star Wars Nickname (based on the Star Wars movie trilogy) of U.S. President Ronald Reagan's plan to research, develop, and build a space-based system that could destroy incoming nuclear missiles. Introduced March 23, 1983 and officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
START Arms control treaty negotiated by Reagan and Gorbachev
Superpower A country that dominates in political and military power. During the Cold War, there were two superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States.
Truman Doctrine President Truman in response to the British being unable to anti-communist regimes in Turkey and Greece asks Congress for money to contain the spread of communism. In his speech, Truman stresses the need to support democratic counties and to contain communism.
U.S.S.R. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), also commonly called the Soviet Union, was a country that consisted of what is now Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Yalta Conference A conference held in February 1945 between ‘the Big Three’ – leaders of the USA, USSR and Britain
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