User:Y/Struggle

The Struggle is real...

Early War

• Duck and cover
• Five Year Plan
• Socialist Governments - a generic card, based on the history of socialist and communist parties in Italy and France and elsewhere.
• Fidel (1959)
• Vietnam Revolts
• Blockade (1948-49)
• Korean War (1950-53)

King Michael's Act of Abdication

• Romanian Abdication (1947) - King Michael I is still alive, to this day! Amazing. He's 93.
• Arab-Israeli War - there were several. The major ones were 1948, 1967, and 1973. USSR generally supported the Arab countries, and the U.S. generally supported Israel.
• Comecon
• Nasser - see also Egyptian Revolution of 1952
• Marshall Plan (1948-51)
• Warsaw Pact Formed (1955)
• NATO (formed 1949)
• De Gaulle Leads France (elected president 1958)
• Captured Nazi Scientist - see Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip, on the U.S. side. On the Soviet side there were fewer captured Nazi scientists, but they did get some, for example Helmut Gröttrup.
• Truman Doctrine
• Olympic Games - see 1980 Summer Olympics boycott (Moscow Olympics), 1984 Summer Olympics boycott (Los Angeles Olympics)
• Independent Reds - refers primarily to the Tito–Stalin Split in Yugoslavia (1948) and similar trends in Romania and Albania.
• Indo-Pakistani War - there were several, starting in 1947.
• Containment
• CIA Created (1947) - see Central Intelligence Agency
• US-Japan Mutual Defense Pact (1951)
• Suez Crisis (1956) - invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France.
• East European Unrest - refers to a number of events in different countries: for example, in early war, Hungarian Revolution of 1956, in mid-war, Prague Spring (1968), and in late war, Romanian Revolution (1989).
• Decolonization - generic card, referring to a number of African and Asian countries declaring independence from the colonial powers (Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Belgium) in the 1950s and 60s.
• Red Scare / Purge - see McCarthyism in the U.S., "Purge" generally refers to Stalin's tendency to imprison or kill members of the Soviet political elite, from time to time, until the end of this rule in 1953.
• UN Intervention - see United Nations
• De-Stalinization (1956) - following Stalin's death in 1953.
• Nuclear Test Ban (1963)
• Formosan Resolution (1955)
• Defectors - throughout the war, various notable Soviets (including spies and senior officers) defected to the American side.

Mid War

• Brush War - generic card that doesn't stand for any particular war.
• Arms Race
• Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
• Nuclear Subs - see USS Nautilus (SSN-571) (1958), the first nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy.
• Quagmire - refers to the Vietnam War (see above, Vietnam Revolts). Quagmire means land that is soaked with water, and when you step into you, you start to sink. The war lasted a decade and the U.S. couldn't seem to find an ending...
• Bear Trap - refers to the Soviet–Afghan War (1979-89). The war lasted a decade and the USSR couldn't seem to find an ending...
• SALT Negotiations - see Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (1969)
• Summit - generic card that refers to any number of meetings between the leaders of the superpowers.
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying - refers to a 1964 satirical movie called Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, about a nuclear attack by the U.S. on USSR.
• Junta - this is a Spanish-derived word, which now means a group of people seizing power, usually applied to Spanish-speaking third world countries. For example, 1976 Argentine coup d'état (1976).

Poke opponent in the chest and gain 2 VP!

• Kitchen Debates (1959) - Nixon and Khrushchev had an argument at a kitchen equipment exhibit in Moscow, in the course of which Nixon poked Khrushchev in the chest.
• Missile Envy - title of a 1984 anti-nuclear-weapons book by Helen Caldicott
• "We will bury you" (1956) - a famous line from a threatening speech that Khrushchev delivered to a group of western ambassadors
• Brezhnev Doctrine (1968) - a policy position taken by the USSR that it will not allow socialist countries under its influence to revert to capitalism, by military force if need be.
• Portuguese Empire Crumbles - see Angolan War of Independence (1961-74); Mozambican War of Independence (1964-74)
• South African Unrest - refers to a series of clashes within South Africa in which the black population protested against the racist policy of Apartheid. For general background, see Internal resistance to apartheid.
• Allende - president of Chile from 1970 until his death in a U.S.-supported coup in 1973.
• Willy Brandt - chancellor of West Germany (1969-74); adopted a friendlier tone toward the USSR and its East European satellites.
• Muslim Revolution - generic card that refers to the emergence of political Islam in a number of Muslim countries; the main example is the Iranian Revolution (1979)
• ABM Treaty (1972)
• Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - a very painful episode in Chinese history. Although the USSR had nothing to do with the Cultural Revolution, this is a Soviet card because the Cultural Revolution strained U.S.-China relations and made U.S. influence in the region much more difficult the achieve. (The loss of Vietnam did not help...)
• Flower Power (late 1960s) - make love, not war!
• U-2 Incident (1960) - American spy plane shot down over Russia
• OPEC - the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was created in 1960 in order to manage the price of petroleum. It has frequently been a thorn in the side of the U.S. and other heavily industrialized nations, which consume a lot of fuel.
• Colonial Rear Guards - generic card that refers to the colonial powers' efforts to stop or reverse the decolonization process.
• Panama Canal Returned (1977) - the decision to voluntarily relinquish U.S. control over the Panama Canal Zone made the U.S. more popular in the region.
• Sadat Expels Soviets (1972) - 20,000 Soviet military personnel expelled from Egypt. The resulting rapprochement with the U.S. led to the Camp David Accords six years later.
• Camp David Accords (1978) - the U.S. achieved a diplomatic victory by bringing together former enemies and preventing another outbreak of Arab-Israeli War.
• Puppet Governments - generic card that refers to any number of U.S.-controlled regimes in various countries.
• Grain Sales to Soviets (1972) - Nixon permitted subsidized sales of American grain to the USSR, who were increasingly unable to feed their people adequately.
• John Paul II Elected Pope (1978) - Polish-born JP2 was always a thorn in the eye of the USSR.
• Latin American Death Squads - generic card that refers to the nasty tendency of various leftist and rightist regimes in the Americas to use brutal extrajudicial violence and roaming execution squads to settle their scores.
• OAS Founded - I'm confused why this is a mid-war card, since the Organization of American States was founded in 1948, right at the beginning of the Cold War. The OAS allowed the U.S. to spread its influence all over Central and South America.
• Nixon Plays the China Card - normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1972, see 1972 Nixon visit to China
• Shuttle Diplomacy - refers to Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State during 1973-77, who was very effective at advancing U.S. foreign policy aims.
• Voice of America - U.S. Government radio, which was streamed into countries under Soviet control, against the wishes of local governments.
• Liberation Theology - intersection of Catholicism and Communism, which took root among the impoverished countries of Latin America in the 1970s.
• Ussuri River Skirmish (1969) - tiny little border war between USSR and China. A few hundred lives lost for absolutely no reason.
• Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You - refers to the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy (1961). The full quote from JFK's inaugural address is this: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Unfortunately, his administration was short lived, due to the next item.
• Lone Gunman - refers to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963) by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was probably a lone gunman, but was also at some point a communist and lived in the USSR a few years prior to the assassination.
• Alliance for Progress (1961) - Kennedy's outreach to Latin America
• One Small Step (1969) - refers to the Moon landing by Apollo 11. As he stepped off the ladder and onto the lunar surface for the first time, Neil Armstrong famously said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

to be continued...