The small conflicts that were “hot” during the Cold War took place over the entire globe, and generally pitted allies of the United States against allies of the Soviet Union.  An “Iron Curtain” existed in Europe from the partition of Germany, down through Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, east through the Soviet Union itself.  In other conflicts, including Korea and Cuba, the United States and Soviet Union picked sides in Civil Wars, with the Korean War being fought between Soviet backed North Korea and U.S. backed South Korea.

In the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, Japanese planes appeared over Hawaii and began bombing Pearl Harbor Naval Base.  The next day, President Roosevelt gave a speech declaring war on the Axis powers and made his famous statement about the Japanese attack.

The idea of peaceful diplomatic negotiation coupled with the implied threat of militaristic intervention summarizes the foreign policy beliefs of Theodore Roosevelt during his time as President. It is generally referred to as Big Stick Diplomacy or Big Stick Policy. It was ultimately reversed by Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he instituted the Good Neighbor Policy – which stated that the United States would no longer interfere in the affairs of its Latin American Neighboring countries. 

The Reagan Doctrine explicitly stated that the USSR was “the concentration of all modern evil” and that the United States had a duty to curb the spread of Communism and support Anti-Soviet movements throughout the world. Although Reagan would have argued in favor of “trickle-down economics” – the policy that tax cuts on the rich will lead to a trickle-down effect whereby the poor are paid more – this idea is better summarized by the term “Reaganomics.” Likewise, Reagan would have also argued that increased military spending was the surest way to protect American interests; however this idea is not covered by the Reagan Doctrine. 

In 1915, US troops invaded Mexico looking for Pancho Villa.  It was also revealed that Germany had tried to form an alliance with Mexico against America, leading to increased tension. Even though Mexico turned down this alliance, relations were strained with the US after the fact. 

World War I was fought between the Allied (Entente) Powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Italy was originally part of the Central Alliance, but switched sides before committing troops, joining the Allied cause in 1915. In 1917, The United States joined the war on the side of the Allied Powers.

FDR’s “cash-and-carry” policy was an amendment to the Neutrality Act. Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the measure so that the United States could support the allied powers without giving up their claims to neutrality. The “cash-and-carry” policy stated that warring nations could purchase arms from the United States, so long as they paid in cash and carried the weapons away on their own ships. 

Richard Nixon opened relations with Mao’s China when he visited Beijing in 1972. Prior to Nixon’s visit, relations between China and the United States had been extremely negative. The United States recognized the nationalist government of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China. Nixon’s visit, and Kissinger’s diplomacy, reversed this policy. At the time many people believed this to be one of the most important turning points in the Cold War. It did lead, eventually, to a massive growth in trade agreements and social exchange between the two nations and, some historians maintain, helped isolate the Soviet Union and bring about the end of the Cold War.

The Dawes Plan, proposed in 1924, was an attempt to solve the massive economic and diplomatic problems caused by the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty declared Germany responsible for the outbreak of war and mandated that Germany pay reparations to Great Britain and France. Additionally, Britain and France owed a substantial amount of money to the United States. Germany, due to extreme economic difficulties, was largely unable to pay back the money. The Dawes Plan proposed that United States’ banks would lend money to Germany with a generous payment plan in place. The Germans would then in turn pay reparations to Great Britain and France, and they would pay back their debt to the United States. At the time it was enough to earn Dawes the Nobel Peace Prize; however, as you can imagine with such an obviously circular mechanism, it did not wholly work and was replaced in 1929 with a different plan. 

Brinksmanship refers to an aggressive form of diplomacy that requires pushing dangerous events to the brink of a declaration of war, in order to gain the most advantageous positing for aggressor. The policy, along with the corollary phenomenon called "Mutually Assured Destruction," defined the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. The term began to be used during the Eisenhower administration and can be observed in numerous political crises of the twentieth century—for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis.