Postwar US Foreign Policy

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an intergovernmental military alliance established in 1949 to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

The Iron Curtain was the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West.

The National Liberation Front (NLF), also known as the Vietcong, was formed to oppose the government of South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem.

The Domino Theory was a Cold War policy that suggested if one country in a region fell to communism, the surrounding countries would inevitably follow. This theory was a primary justification for U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens and public employees suspected of having communist ties.

The 1954 Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War and resulted in the temporary division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam.

The Truman Doctrine established that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces, specifically aimed at containing communism.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty established by the Soviet Union and its satellite states in 1955, essentially the communist counterpart to NATO, and thus not a U.S. policy of containment.

The Cold War was primarily defined by the ideological struggle between the capitalist, democratic United States and the communist, authoritarian Soviet Union.

Estimates of U.S. Cold War spending vary, but 5.5 trillion dollars is a commonly cited figure in historical economic analyses of the era's defense and foreign aid expenditures.

The Viet Cong utilized an extensive, complex network of underground tunnels to survive American aerial bombardment, move supplies, and launch surprise attacks.

The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party from 1958 to 1962, which aimed to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization.

At the Yalta Conference, the 'Big Three' (Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) agreed that liberated nations in Europe should have interim governments and free, democratic elections.

The Korean War reached a stalemate after Chinese forces entered the conflict in support of North Korea, pushing back UN forces and preventing a quick victory.