Social Sciences and History / Unit 6 SSH 0537 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Containment or Non-Alignment: Sorting Cold War Events
The idea
The exam gives a Cold War event and asks what it shows, and the anchor's chapter supplies three categories. Containment: the Western policy of confining communism to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, tested at the Berlin blockade of nineteen forty-eight to forty-nine and answered by the airlift and NATO, with the Warsaw Pact as reply; extended to Korea in nineteen fifty, to South Vietnam after France's war, and to interventions in Guatemala and Cuba. Communism's spread: Mao's victory in nineteen forty-nine, unrecognized by the United States; North Korea's invasion; North Vietnam. Non-alignment: Yugoslavia outside the Soviet orbit though communist; former colonies, led by Indonesia, India and Egypt, seeking development without becoming either superpower's satellite, while still taking aid from one or both. Egypt drifted toward Moscow over Western support for Israel.
In practice
Given "an airlift to a blockaded city", containment tested. Given "a communist state refusing Moscow's orbit", non-alignment, Yugoslavia. Given "a new republic the United States refused to recognize", communism's spread, China. Given "a newly independent state accepting aid from both sides", non-alignment. Given "a bloc's answer to NATO", the Warsaw Pact.
Where people slip
The trap is treating non-alignment as neutrality in practice; the anchor says its leaders accepted aid from both, and Egypt leaned Soviet. The second trap is dating the Sino-Soviet split early; the anchor puts it in the late sixties, opening room for the United States.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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