Chapter 26: Cold War Politics in the Tru man Years 1945-1953 Terms out of the BookNew Deal: A group of soc ial and economic programs that P resi dent Franklin Roo sevelt developed to provide relief for the needy, speed economic recovery and reform economic and government institutions. The New Deal was a massive effort to bring the United States our of the Great Depression and e nsure future prosperity. Cold War: The hostile and tense re lationship that existed between the Soviet Union the one hand and the United States and Western Union Nations on the other from 1947 to 1989. This war was said to be ³cold´ because the ho stili ty sto pped short of armed (not) conflict which was warded o ff by strategy of nuclear deterrence. Was the end o f an era- 40years-USSR-Chinese-US. Cold War emerged when WW II was o ver (after Japan was bombed). Stalin was a huge reason why the Cold War started. Communism (Communist Party): A system of government and po li tical organization based on the Marxist-Leninist ideals, in which a single aut horitarian party controls the economy through state o wnershi p of prod uction, as a means to wards reaching the final stage of Marxist theory in which the state dissolves and economic goods are distributed evenly for the common good. Communists around the globe encouraged spread ofcommunism in other nations in hopes o f fomenting a worldwide revolution. At its peak in the 1930¶s the communist party of the United St ates worked closely with the labor unions and insisted that only the overthro w of the capitalist system by its workers could have the same victims of the Great Depression. After WW I, the co mmunists powers and aspirations of the Soviet Union were held t o be direct threat to the American Democracy prompting the Cold War. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): A post WW II alliance that joined the United States, Canada, and t he Western European nations into the mili tary co alition designed to counter the Soviet Unions efforts to expand. Each NATO member pledged to go to war if any member was attacked. Since the end of the Cold War NATO has been expanding to include formally communist co untries of Eastern Europe. Containment: The US foreign policy developed after WW II to hold in check the powers and influence of the So viet Union and the other gro ups or nations espousing communism. The strategy was the first fully articulated diplomat George F. Kennan in 1946-1947. Democracy: A system of government in which the people have t he power to rule, eitherdirectly of indirectly though their elected representatives believing that direct democracy was dangerous, the framers of the co nstituti on creat ed a government that gave d irect voice to the people only in the house of representatives and that placed a check on that voice in the senate by offering unlimited six year terms to the senators elected by the sate legislatures to protect them from the whims of democratic majorities. The framers furthercurbed the perceived dangers of democracy by giving each of the three branches ofgovernment (Legislature, executive, and j udicial) the ability to check the power of the other two.
