50 Fun Facts About Foreign Policy

Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposed nuclear shield, was nicknamed after which film series?

Star Wars became the nickname after Senator Ted Kennedy used the film's title to mock a plan that studied lasers and space-based weapons.

Which sport's American team was invited to China in 1971, a goodwill visit that helped thaw two decades of hostility?

Table tennis broke the ice after American player Glenn Cowan missed his team bus at the world championships in Japan and rode with the Chinese squad instead.

Theodore Roosevelt summed up his foreign policy with a proverb about speaking softly while carrying what?

A big stick stood for quiet negotiation backed by the threat of force. Roosevelt called the saying a West African proverb, though there is little evidence for that.

Which 1803 deal with France nearly doubled the size of the United States for about fifteen million dollars?

The Louisiana Purchase cost less than three cents an acre. The American envoys had been prepared to pay up to $10 million for New Orleans and its surroundings alone.

Soviet nuclear missiles on which Caribbean island triggered a thirteen-day standoff with the United States in 1962?

Cuba was ringed by American warships in what John F. Kennedy called a quarantine, because declaring a blockade would have implied a state of war.

Which US aid programme, named after a secretary of state, helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II?

The Marshall Plan transferred more than $13 billion to Western Europe. The Soviet Union was offered a share but refused it and blocked its Eastern Bloc allies from accepting.

In which country were 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days after students stormed the US embassy in 1979?

Iran freed the hostages just minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in, a day after the signing of the Algiers Accords that ended the standoff.

Which US president, long known as a fierce anti-communist, stunned the world with a 1972 visit to Beijing?

Richard Nixon was the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China while in office, though full diplomatic relations had to wait until 1979.

NATO's mutual defence clause, Article 5, was invoked for the first time in response to which event?

The 9/11 attacks prompted the first use of Article 5, so a clause written with a Soviet assault on Western Europe in mind ended up defending the United States.

Which international body, championed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I, did the United States never join?

The League of Nations earned Wilson the Nobel Peace Prize, yet he could not win approval for it at home, and American absence weakened its credibility from the start.

Which volunteer agency did John F. Kennedy create in 1961 to send young Americans to work in developing countries?

The Peace Corps grew out of a late-night campaign speech at the University of Michigan, and Kennedy launched it by executive order within weeks of taking office.

Which city, blockaded by Soviet forces in 1948, was kept alive by American and British planes flying in supplies?

Berlin received about 2.3 million tons of supplies by air before the airlift ended, and nearly two-thirds of everything flown in was coal.

Which small Gulf state did an American-led coalition free from Iraqi occupation in Operation Desert Storm?

Kuwait was freed by a ground assault that the coalition halted after just one hundred hours, following more than a month of bombing.

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution let Lyndon Johnson wage war without a formal declaration in which country?

Vietnam became a full-scale American war on the strength of a resolution that Congress approved after less than nine hours of consideration and debate.

Which country became the first Arab state to recognise Israel, signing a peace treaty in 1979 after talks at Camp David?

Egypt was suspended from the main organisation of Arab states for a decade because of the treaty, and President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

Which country took full control of a US-built canal at noon on the last day of 1999?

Panama took over under treaties Jimmy Carter signed in 1977, ending the control of the waterway that the United States had exercised since 1903.

Which European power gave up Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States after a brief 1898 war?

Spain received $20 million for the Philippines, but its own legislature rejected the peace treaty and Queen Regent Maria Christina had to sign it instead.

Which Soviet leader nearly agreed with Ronald Reagan to scrap all nuclear weapons at a 1986 summit in Reykjavik?

Mikhail Gorbachev left Iceland without a deal, but the progress made there led to the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Which term describes the American mood between the world wars that produced the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s?

Isolationism shaped laws that barred Americans from trading arms with warring nations or sailing on their ships.

Which legal protection, codified by treaty in 1961, shields accredited envoys from prosecution in a host country?

Diplomatic immunity is one of the oldest practices in international relations. A host country can expel an envoy who abuses it but cannot put them on trial unless the envoy's own government waives the protection.

Which US president's 1823 message to Congress warned European powers against further colonisation in the Americas?

James Monroe gave the doctrine its name, but for many years it was Britain's Royal Navy that enforced it, because the American fleet was too small.

Which US president's Farewell Address urged Americans to avoid permanent alliances with foreign nations?

George Washington issued the address as a letter printed in a newspaper rather than as a speech, and Alexander Hamilton wrote most of it.

Which secretary of state's trips between Middle East capitals after the Yom Kippur War were dubbed shuttle diplomacy?

Henry Kissinger's shuttling produced a 1974 arrangement between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights and the Sinai Interim Agreement a year later.

Which Prague-born diplomat became the first woman to serve as US secretary of state in 1997?

Madeleine Albright arrived in America as a child refugee after the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and later wrote her doctoral thesis on the Prague Spring.

Which Founding Father led the American commissioners who secured a military alliance with France in 1778?

Benjamin Franklin won over French society as a model of republican simplicity, and the British defeat at Saratoga then pushed the royal government into a formal alliance.

Under the US Constitution, which body must approve a treaty by a two-thirds vote before it becomes binding?

The Senate must give its advice and consent to a treaty, though presidents can also conclude executive agreements with other countries on their own authority.

Which Cold War strategy grew out of George Kennan's Long Telegram and his anonymous 1947 article signed X?

Containment took its name from a phrase in that article, yet Kennan later turned against the policy, saying he had meant a political response and not a military one.

Which term describes Neville Chamberlain's policy of conceding to Adolf Hitler's territorial demands at Munich in 1938?

Appeasement collapsed within six months, when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia in defiance of the promises he had given at Munich.

Which term names the 1970s thaw in US–Soviet relations that produced arms treaties and the Helsinki Accords?

Détente is considered to have ended with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, which led the US to boycott the Moscow Olympics the following year.

Which Cold War idea did Dwight Eisenhower set out in 1954 to explain why Indochina mattered to all of Southeast Asia?

Domino theory pictured countries toppling into communism one after another, though Eisenhower meant it only as a description of Southeast Asia at that moment.

Which Latin phrase do governments use when declaring a foreign diplomat unwelcome and demanding that person's recall?

Persona non grata can be declared at any time and without any explanation, and Cold War rivals often traded such expulsions tit for tat.

Which power do the five permanent members of the UN Security Council each hold over its binding decisions?

A veto is never mentioned by name in the UN Charter. The power comes from Article 27, which requires the concurring votes of the permanent members.

Which trade agreement, in force from 1994 until 2020, linked the United States with its two land neighbours?

NAFTA superseded an earlier free trade deal with Canada alone, and it stayed in force until the USMCA replaced it in July 2020.

Which Soviet-led military alliance was created in 1955 in response to West Germany joining NATO?

The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was against one of its own members: the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Which failed 1961 landing by CIA-backed exiles was meant to topple Fidel Castro and collapsed within three days?

The Bay of Pigs plan was devised under Dwight Eisenhower and inherited by John F. Kennedy, who decided to withhold further air support as the landing faltered.

In the 1917 Zimmermann telegram, Germany secretly offered a military alliance to which Latin American country?

Mexico was promised Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, but British codebreakers in Room 40 read the message, and its release helped build American support for war with Germany.

Which programme, signed into law in March 1941, let the US supply Britain and other Allies before entering the war?

Lend-Lease shipped supplies worth about $50 billion in all, and Britain finished repaying the loans on a related post-war sale only in 2006.

Which European capital gave its name to the 1993 accords between Israel and the PLO after secret talks there?

Oslo hosted the secret negotiations that led to mutual recognition, and Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres shared the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

In which European capital did Britain sign the 1783 treaty recognising the independence of the United States?

Paris hosted the signing at the Hôtel d'York, where the American envoys won a western border on the Mississippi River for the new country.

At which Black Sea resort did Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet in February 1945 to plan post-war Europe?

Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three, with sessions spread across the Livadia, Yusupov and Vorontsov palaces.

Harry Truman's 1947 doctrine began with a request to Congress for $400 million in aid to which two countries?

Greece and Turkey were both to receive aid, partly to cool their rivalry and keep the two neighbours together in the Western camp.

Which New Hampshire resort hosted the 1944 conference that created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank?

Bretton Woods drew 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations in July 1944, and the system of pegged exchange rates agreed there lasted until the early 1970s.

Winston Churchill gave his 1946 Iron Curtain speech, with Harry Truman watching, at a college in which US state?

Missouri's Westminster College in the town of Fulton hosted the address, which Churchill had titled Sinews of Peace.

England's 1386 Treaty of Windsor sealed the world's oldest alliance still in force with which country?

Portugal's alliance with England was invoked several times in the twentieth century, including in 1943 to give Britain access to air bases in the Azores.

Which Ohio city gave its name to the 1995 agreement ending the Bosnian War, negotiated at a nearby air force base?

Dayton hosted three weeks of talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and the deal initialled there was ceremonially signed in Europe the following month.

Which Barbary state declared war on the US in 1801 by cutting down the flagstaff at the American consulate?

Tripoli wanted more tribute, which Thomas Jefferson refused to pay, and the fight that followed was the first major American war outside the New World.

Which 1928 treaty, named after an American and a French statesman, committed its signatories to renounce war?

The Kellogg–Briand Pact remains in effect, yet signatories soon waged wars without declaring them, as Japan did when it invaded Manchuria in 1931.

The 1963 US–Soviet hotline, often pictured as a red telephone, originally used which technology?

Teleprinters carried the first messages because the hotline was never a telephone line. Each leader wrote in his own language and the text was translated at the other end.

Which 1648 settlement ended the Thirty Years' War and is often credited with founding the system of sovereign states?

The Peace of Westphalia was really two treaties signed in the neighbouring cities of Osnabrück and Münster, and some historians dispute that it founded that system at all.

In which American city did delegates from fifty Allied nations sign the United Nations Charter in June 1945?

San Francisco hosted the two-month conference mainly at its War Memorial Opera House, and the charter itself was signed at the Herbst Theatre on the final day.