AP Ch.

18 Review Terms
1. Foreign policy
a. Policy that involves choice taking about relations with the rest of the world. The
president is the chief initiator of US foreign policy.
2. United Nations
a. Created in 1945 and currently including 193 member nations, with a central
peacekeeping mission and programs in areas including economic development
and health, education, and welfare. The seat of real power in the UN is the
Security Council.
3. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
a. A regional organization that was created in 1949 by nations including the US,
Canada, and most Western European nations for mutual defense and has
subsequently been expanded.
4. European Union
a. A transitional government composed of most European nations that coordinates
monetary, trade, immigration, and labor policies, making its members one
economic unit.
5. Secretary of State
a. The head of the Department of State and traditionally the key adviser to the
president on foreign policy.
6. Secretary of Defense
a. The head of the Department of Defense and the president's key adviser on military
policy and, as such, a key foreign policy actor.
7. Joint Chiefs of Staff
a. A group that consists of the commanding officers of each of the armed services, a
chairperson, and a vice chairperson, and advises the president on military policy.
8. Central Intelligence Agency
a. An agency created after WWII to coordinate American intelligence activities
abroad and to collect, analyze, and evaluate intelligence.
9. Isolationism
a. The foreign policy course the US followed throughout most of its history whereby
it tried to stay out of other nations conflicts, particularly European wars.
10. Containment Doctrine
a. A foreign policy strategy advocated by George Kennan that called for the US to
isolate the Soviet Union, contain its advances, and resists its encroachments by
peaceful means if possible but by force is necessary.
11. Cold War
a. The hostility between the US and the Soviet Union, which often brough them to
the brink of war and which spanned the period from the end of WWII until the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist regimes in
1989 and the years following.
12. Arms race

a. A tense relationship beginning in the 1950s between the Soviet Union and the US
whereby one sides weaponry became the other sides goad to procure more
weaponry, and so on.
13. Dtente
a. A policy, beginning in the early 1970s, that sought a relaxation of tensions
vetween the US and the Soviet Union, coupled with firm guarantees of mutual
security.
14. Interdependency
a. Mutual reliance, as in the economic realm, in which nations reverberate and affect
the economic well-being of people in other nations.
15. Tariff
a. A special tax added to imported goods to raise their price, thereby protecting
businesses and workers from foreign competition.
16. Balance of trade
a. The ratio of what is paid for imports to what is earned from exports. When more
is paid than earned, there is a balance-of-trade deficit.
17. Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
a. An economic organization consisting primarily of Middle Eastern nations that
seeks to control the amount of oil its members produce and sell to other nations
and hence the price of oil.