Foreign Policy
A policy that involves choice taking like domestic policy, but additionally involves choices about relations with the rest of the world. The president is the chief initiator of foreign policy in the United States.
United Nations
Created in 1945, an organization whose members agree to renounce war and to respect certain human and economic freedoms. The seat of real power in the United Nations is the Security Council.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Created in 1949, an organization whose members include the United States, Canada, most Western European nations, and Turkey, all of whom agreed to combine military forces and to treat a war against one as a war against all.
European Union
A transnational government composed of most European nations that coordinates monetary, trade, immigration, and labor policies, making its members one economic unit. An example of regional organization.
Secretary of State
The head of the Department of State and traditionally a key adviser to the president on foreign policy.
Secretary of Defense
The head of the Department of Defense and the president's key adviser on military policy; a key foreign policy actor.
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The commanding officers of the armed services who advise the president on military policy.
Central Intelligence Agency
An agency created after World War II to coordinate American intelligence activities abroad. It became involved in intrigue, conspiracy, and meddling as well.
Isolationism
A foreign policy followed throughout most of our nation's history whereby the United States has followed to stay out of other nations' conflicts, particularly European wars. Isolationism was reaffirmed by the Monroe Doctrine.
Containment Doctrine
A foreign policy strategy advocated by George Kennan that called for the United States to isolate the Soviet Union, "contain" its advances, and resist its encroachments by peaceful means if possible but by force if necessary.
Cold War
War by other than military means usually emphasizing ideological conflict, such as that between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of World War II until the 1990s.
McCarthyism
The fear, prevalent in the 1950s, that international communism was conspiratorial, insidious, bent on world domination, and infiltrating American government and cultural institutions. It was named after Senator Joseph McCarthy and flourished after the Kor
Arms race
A tense relationship beginning in the 1950s between the Soviet Union and the United States whereby one side's weaponry became the other side's goad to procure more weaponry, and so on.
D�tente
A slow transformation from conflict thinking to cooperative thinking in foreign policy strategy and policymaking. It sought a relaxation of tensions between the superpowers, coupled with firm guarantees of mutual security.
Strategic Defense Initative
Renamed "Star Wars" by critics, a plan for defense against the Soviet Union unveiled by President Reagan in 1983. The Strategic Defense Initiative would create a global umbrella in space, using high-tech devices to destroy invading missiles.
Interdependency
Mutual dependency, in which the actions of nations reverberate and affect one another's economic lifelines.
Tariff
A special tax added to imported goods to raise the price, thereby protecting American businesses and workers from foreign competition.
Balance of Trade
The ratio of what is paid for imports to what is earned in exports. When more is imported than exported, there is a balance-of-trade deficit.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
An economic organization consisting of Arab nations that controls the price of oil and the amount of oil its members produce and sell to other nations.