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Buffer States of the USSR
Poland and other states between Germany and the Soviet Union have sometimes been described as buffer states, with reference both to when they were non-communist states before World War II, and to when they were communist states after World War II. ContainmentTheory -
Atomic Bomb
President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. The American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Deterrence -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov plan was symbolic of the Soviet Union's refusal to accept aid from the Marshall Plan, or allow any of their satellite states to do so, because of their belief that the Plan was an attempt to weaken Soviet interest. M.A.D -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a doctrine, aptly characterized as the Truman Doctrine, that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next 40 years. Domino Theory -
U.S. Aid Greece and Turkey
It was incumbent upon the United States to support Greece so that it could “become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.” The people of Turkey also needed U.S. aid, which was “necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.” Truman requested $400 million in assistance for the two nations. Congress approved his request two months later.
Also in the Truman Doctrine. DominoTheory -
Marshall Plan
Marshall Plan was a program by which the United States gave large amounts of economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after the devastation of World War II. DominoTheory -
Berlin Airlift
Berlin aircraft was a military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air. -
NATO Established
NATO was a military alliance of European and North American democracies founded after World War II. DominoTheory -
USSR Atomic Bomb
The USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. This scared the U.S. that they had caught up. Led to a period of mutual assured destruction. Deterrence -
Communist Win over China
The Americans reinstated Chiang Kai-shek as ruler of China, and tried to organise a truce between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, but after the surrender of Japan a civil war broke out, which the Communists won after a vicious struggle. ContainmentTheory -
Korean War
Korean War was fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist North Korea. The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. -
Coup in Iran
the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. -
Coup in Guatemala
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution. -
Communist Angola
The Angolan War of Independence began as an uprising against forced cotton cultivation, and became a multi-faction struggle for the control of Portugal's Overseas Province of Angola among three nationalist movements and a separatist movement. ContainmentTheory -
Warsaw Act
Warsaw Pact was an alliance between the soviets and all of the eastern European countries. Brinkmanship -
Beginning of the Troops in Vietnam
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Detene -
Suez Crisis
The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. -
Hungary Rebellion
A nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. -
Sputnik
Former Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. This begins the space race. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba. Brinkmanship -
China explodes Atomic Bomb
China successfully exploded its first atomic bomb. The Chinese people had finally developed their own nuclear technology.
On the same day, the Chinese government made a solemn promise to the world that it developed nuclear weapons only for the purpose of self-defense and safeguarding national security. China would never at any time or under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons. Deterrence -
Coup in Chile
Thousands of Chileans were subsequently tortured, jailed and killed by the military dictatorship. Democracy in Chile was irreparably altered, and even now the country continues to be scarred by one of the darkest eras of fear and repression on the continent, changing the history of the country—and region. -
End of the Troops in Vietnam
War ended -
Iran Islamic Revolution
Events involving the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was supported by the United States, and eventual replacement of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy with an Islamic Republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, supported by a wide range of people including various Islamist and leftist organizations and student movements. -
Sandinista rise up in Nicaragua
The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the left-wing, socialist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua. -
War in El Salvador
The Salvadoran Civil War was a conflict between the military-led government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or "umbrella organization" of several left-wing groups -
Soviets invade Afghanistan
The Soviet 40th Army invaded Afghanistan in order to prop up the communist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against a growing insurgency. Detente -
Evil Empire Speech
First applied to the Soviet Union in 1983 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, -
Star Wars (S.D.I)
Strategic Defense Initiative was a program first initiated under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
As the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. Detente -
Fall of the USSR
The Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state. Detente
