Chapter 32
Terrorism: Terrorism is the deliberate use of random violence, especially against civilians, to exact revenge or achieve political goals. Through bombings, kidnappings, airplane hijackings, and shootings, terrorists focused attention on their causes and tried to force governments to give in to their demands.
Privatization: Many countries turned from socialism to privatization, selling of state-owned industries to private investors. Nations hoped that more efficient private enterprises would produce higher-quality goods in the long run.
Nonaligned: To avoid superpower rivalry, many new nations chose to remain nonaligned, that is, not allied to either side of the Cold War. The goal of the nonaligned movement was to reduce world tensions and promote economic policies that would benefit developing nations.
Multinational corporation: Huge multinational corporations, enterprises with branches in many countries, have invested in the developing world. They bring new technology to mining, agriculture, transportation, and other industries. Rich nations also provide aid, technical advisers, and loans.
Liberation theology: In Latin America, some Roman Catholic clergy adopted a movement called liberation theology. They urged the Church to take a more active role in opposing the social conditions that contributed to poverty.
Culture shock: A giant culture shock occurred after the cold war as much of the world modernized. This shock included more rights for women, new and improved technology, western religious evangelism, and urbanization.
Acid rain: Gases from power plants and factories produced acid rain, a form of pollution in which toxic chemicals in the air come back to the Earth as rain, snow, or hail. Acid rain damaged forests, lakes, and farmland, especially in industrial Europe and North America.
Effects of the Cold War: The Cold War created worldwide tension throughout its existence as communism and capitalism fought each other. Many countries refused to take sides and in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, local conflicts took on a Cold War dimension. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This collapse eased tensions and resolved some long-standing conflicts. But troubling local, regional, and global problems remained.
Why did democracy fail in many new nations?: The new nations wrote constitutions modeled on those of western democracies, but only a few were able to sustain democratic rule. This is because colonial rulers had done little to prepare the people for self-government in a postwar world. Many new nations were shaken by revolution or civil war. Often, a wealthy, western-educated elite controlled the government and economy while the great majority of people remained poor.
Majority of world’s wealth controlled by…?: The rich nations of the global North, including the industrial nations of Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia, control most of the world’s wealth. With a few exceptions, most rich nations have basically capitalist economies.
Effect of urbanization in developing nations: Urbanization is causing the gap between rich and poor to grow. Every year, economic refugees, as well as refugees created by war, flood into rich nations, hoping to find a better life. Millions of other refugees, however, remain in Third World countries close to their homes.
Factories effect on environmental damage: For both rich and poor nations, economic development has been achieved at great cost to the natural environment. Modern industry and agriculture have gobbled up natural resources and polluted the world’s water, air, and soil. Major industrial accidents have also threatened the environment.
Factors contributing to political instability in African nations: Civil wars and other struggles have prevented economic development in certain countries, such as Mozambique in Africa. Military dictators or other authoritarian leaders spent huge sums on weapons and warfare instead of on education, housing, or health care. War created millions of refugees living in camps both inside and outside their home countries.
Primary cause of global interdependence: Since 1945, transportation and communication systems have made the world increasingly independent. Interdependence is the dependence of countries on goods, resources, and knowledge from other parts of the world.
Global South: The global South refers to the developing world. Most of these nations lie in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the zone between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. For most people in the developing world, life is a daily struggle for survival. About one billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty.
Modern technology: Since 1945, technology has transformed human life and thought. Instant communication via satellites has shrunk the glove. New forms of energy, especially nuclear power, have been added to the steam power, electricity, and gasoline energy of the first industrial age.
Chapter 33
Welfare state: A major goal of leftists parties was to extend the welfare state. Under this system, a government keeps most features of a capitalist economy but takes greater responsibility for the social and economic needs of its people.
Glasnost: Mikhail Gorbachev called for glasnost, or openness. He ended censorship and encouraged people to discuss publicly the country’s problems.
Dissident: Leonid Brezhnev rigorously suppressed dissidents, people who spoke out against the government. Critics faced arrest and imprisonment. Some were locked away in insane asylums, a policy once used by czarist Russia.
Deficit: Government spending and tax cuts greatly increased the national deficit, the gap between what a government spends and what it takes in through taxes and other sources. As the deficit continued to grow in the 1990s, conservatives crusaded for deeper cuts in social and economic programs.
Détente: By the 1970s, American and Soviet leaders promoted an era of détente, or relaxation of tensions. Détente brought new agreements to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Détente faced a severe setback, however, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Leonid: In time, Leonid Brezhnev took over the Soviet Union, holding power until his death in 1982. Brezhnev rigorously suppressed dissidents, people who spoke out against the government. He also created the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in the affairs of any communist nation.
Brezhnev: Leonid Brezhnev took over the Soviet Union, holding power until his death in 1982. He created the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in the affairs of any communist nation. Brezhnev also rigorously suppressed dissidents, people who spoke out against the government.
Charles de Gaulle: In 1958, Charles de Gaulle set up the Fifth Republic in France. Although a staunch nationalist, de Gaulle realized that France must give up Algeria. In 1962, he made peace with the Algerians. De Gaulle worked hard to restore French prestige and power, so he forged new ties with West Germany, ending the long hostility between the two nations. He developed a French nuclear force and challenged American dominance in Europe.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: By 1956, a gifted preacher, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as a leader of the civil rights movement. King organized boycotts and led peaceful marches throughout the 1960s to end segregation in the United States.
Joseph McCarthy: Between 1950 and 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy charged many Americans with harboring communist sympathies. Government probes, however, produced little evidence of subversion. Eventually, the Senate condemned McCarthy’s reckless behavior, but not before his unjust charges had ruined the careers of thousands of Americans.
Margaret Thatcher: Many British leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher, opposed increased links with Europe. During 11 years as Britain’s prime minister, Thatcher worked to replace government social and economic programs with she called an “enterprise culture” that promoted individual initiative. She privatized government-run industries, curbed the power of labor unions, reduced the size of the government bureaucracy, and cut back welfare services.
Perestroika: Mikhail Gorbachev urged the restructuring of government and the economy, called perestroika. Streamlining government and reducing the size of the bureaucracy, he hoped, would boost efficiency and output.
Service industry: Most new jobs at home were created not in manufacturing but in service industries. A service industry is one that provides a service rather than a product. Service industries include health care, finance, sales, education, and recreation.
Mikhail Gorbachev: In foreign policy, Mikhail Gorbachev sought an end to costly Cold War tensions. He renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, signed arms control treaties with the United States, and eventually pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.
Helmut Kohl: West German chancellor Helmut Kohl was the architect of unity. He assured both the Soviet Union and the West that a united Germany would pose no threat to peace. In 1990, German voters approved reunification, and Kohl became chancellor of a united Germany.
Nikita Khrushchev: In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev shocked top Communist party members when he publicly denounced Stalin’s abuse of power. Khrushchev then pursued a policy of de-Stalinization, He did not change Soviet goals but did free many political prisoners and eased censorship.
Josip Tito: During World War II, a fierce guerrilla leader, Josip Tito, ha battled German occupying forces. Later, Tito set up a communist government in Yugoslavia, but he pursued a path independent of Moscow. He refused to join the Warsaw Pact and claimed to be neutral in the Cold War.
Lech Walesa: Led by Lech Walesa, shipyard workers in the port of Gdansk organized an independent trade union called Solidarity. It soon claimed 10 million members, who pressed for political change.
Reunification of Germany: By 1989, the decline of communism in the Soviet Union made Germany’s reunification possible. Without Soviet power to back them up, East German communist leaders were forced out of office. The Berlin Wall was dismantled and Germans set about reuniting their divided land.
Goal of separatism in Quebec: Quebec’s French-speaking population saw themselves as a “distinct-society.” To protect their culture, Quebec demanded more autonomy within Canada. Government leaders tried to meet those demands, but other provinces resisted any solutions that gave Quebec special treatment.
Result of central economic planning in the Soviet Union: Rapid economic change in the Soviet Union brought turmoil. Shortages grew worse, prices soared, factories closed, and thousands of people lost their jobs. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed.
Civil war in Yugoslavia: After Josip Tito’s death and the fall of communism, a wave of nationalism tore Yugoslavia apart. Ambitious extremists, such as Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, stirred ethnic unrest for their own ends. Croats created the separate countries of Croatia and Slovenia. Sarajevo became the capital of a new nation called Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia and Montenegro kept the name Yugoslavia.