| diplomacy | the conduct of international relations, particularly involving the negotiation of treaties and other agreements between nations
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| foreign service officers | the diplomatic and consular staff at U.S. embassies abroad
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| normal trade relations (NTR) status | the international trade principle holding that the least restrictive trade conditions (best tariff rates) offered to any one national trading partner will be offered to every other nation in a trading network (also known as most favored nations)
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| sanctions | penalties that halt economic relations
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| globalism | the interconnectedness between nations in contemporary times
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| al-Qaeda | a radical international Islamic fundamentalist terror organization
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| weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) | nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons
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| regime change | the replacement of a country's government with another government by facilitating the deposing of its leader or leading political party
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| country desk | the official operation of the U.S. government in each country that has diplomatic ties to the United States
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| director of national intelligence (DNI) | the person responsible for coordinating and overseeing all the intelligence agencies within the executive branch
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| War Powers Act | law that limits presidential use of military forces to sixty days, with an automatic extension of thirty additional days if the president requests such an extension
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| public diplomat | an individual outside government who promotes his or her country's interests and thus helps to shape international perceptions of that nation
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| intermestics | the influence of domestic interests on foreign policy
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| isolationism | a foreign policy characterized by a nation's unwillingness to participate in international affairs
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| interventionism | a foreign policy characterized by a nation's willingness to participate and intervene in international situations, including another country's affairs
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| impressment | the forcible removal of merchant sailors from U.S. ships on the spurious grounds that the sailors were deserters from the British Navy
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| Monroe Doctrine | President James Monroe's 1823 declaration that the Americas should not be considered subjects for future colonization by any European power
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| manifest destiny | the idea that it was the United States' destiny to spread throughout the North American continent; used to rationalize the expansion of U.S. territory
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| Roosevelt Corollary | the idea, advanced by President Theodore Roosevelt, that the United States had the right to act as an "international police power" in the Western Hemisphere to ensure stability in the region
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| balance of power system | a system of international alliances that, in theory, would balance the power of one group of nations against the power of another group and thus discourage war
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| collective defense | the concept that allied nations agree to defend one another in the face of an invasion
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| collective security | the idea that peace could be achieved if nations agreed to collectively oppose any nation that attacked another country
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| League of Nations | a representative body founded in the aftermath of World War I to establish the collective security of nations
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| Holocaust | the genocide perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis against 6 million Jews, along with political dissidents, Catholics, homosexuals, the disabled, and gypsies
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| superpowers | leader nations with dominating influence in international affairs
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| multilateral | many-sided; having the support of numerous nations
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| Marshall Plan | the U.S. government program that provided funds necessary for Western European countries to rebuild after World War II
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| United Nations (UN) | established in 1945, an international body intended to prevent future wars by achieving collective security and peace
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| regional security alliance | an alliance typically between a superpower and nations that are ideologically similar in a particular region
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| North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | an international mutual defense alliance formed in 1949 that created a structure for regional security for its fifteen member nations
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| Warsaw Pact | regional security structure formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and its seven satellite states in Eastern Europe in response to the creation of NATO
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| Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) | regional security agreement whose goal was to prevent communist encroachment in the countries of Southeast Asia
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| International Monetary Fund (IMF) | institution charged with regulating monetary relationships among nations, including establishment of exchange rates for major world currencies; established in 1944 by the Bretton Woods Agreement
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| World Bank | international financial institution created by the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 and charged with lending money to nations in need
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| World Trade Organization (WTO) | organization created in 1995 to negotiate, implement, and enforce international trade agreements
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| Cold War | the political, ideological, and military conflict that lasted from 1945 until 1990 between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and Western democracies led by the United States
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| Truman Doctrine | articulated by President Harry Truman, a foreign policy commitment by the United States to assist countries' efforts to resist communism in the Cold War era
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| containment | Cold War-era policy of preventing the spread of communism, mainly by providing military and economic aid as well as political advice to countries vulnerable to a communist takeover
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| limited war | a combatant country's self-imposed limitation on the tactics and strategy it uses, particularly its avoidance of the use of nuclear weapons
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| brinkmanship | Cold War-era practice of fooling the enemy by going to the edge (the brink), even if the party using the strategy had no intention of following through
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| domino theory | the principle that if one nation fell to communism, other nations in its geographic vicinity would also succumb
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| Nixon Doctrine | policy emphasizing the responsibility of U.S. allies to provide for their own national defense and security, aimed at improving relations with the communist nations, including the Soviet Union and China
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| détente | easing of tensions between the United States and its communist rivals
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| mutual assured destruction (MAD) | the doctrine that if one nation attacked another with nuclear weapons, the other would be capable of retaliating and would retaliate with such force as to assure mutual annihilation
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| deterrence | the idea that nations would be less likely to engage in nuclear war if adversaries each had first-strike capability
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| strategic arms limitation talks (SALT talks) | discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s that focused on cooling down the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers
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| SALT I | treaty signed in 1972 by the United States and the Soviet Union limiting the two countries' antiballistic missiles and freezing the number of offensive missiles that each nation could have at the number they already possessed, plus the number they had under construction
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| SALT II | treaty signed in 1979 by the United States and the Soviet Union that set an overall limit on strategic nuclear launchers, limited the number of missiles that could carry multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) with nuclear warheads, and limited each nation to the development of only one new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
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| defense conversion | President Jimmy Carter's attempt to convert the nation's vast military apparatus to peacetime functions
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| strategic arms reduction talks (START talks) | talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in which reductions in missiles and nuclear warheads, not merely a limitation on increases, were negotiated
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| strategic defense initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars") | a ballistic missile defense system advocated by President Ronald Reagan
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| clash of civilizations thesis | Samuel Huntington's idea that bitter cultural conflict will continue and escalate between modern Western democracies and fundamentalist Islamic states
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| Bush Doctrine | the argument, articulated by President George W. Bush, that unilateral action directly targeted at an enemy is both justifiable and feasible
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| preventive war | the strategy of waging war on countries regarded as threatening in order to avoid future conflicts
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