Deck 30: After the Fall: The Western World in a Global Age (Since 1985)

Question 1

Please define the following key terms.
perestroika

Answer 1

Answers will vary.

Question 2

Please define the following key terms.
Vladimir Putin

Answer 2

Answers will vary.

Question 3

"Globalization is going to be the salvation of civilization." Do you agree or disagree? Explain, citing evidence to make your case.

Answer 3

Answers will vary.

Question 4

Please define the following key terms.
Boris Yeltsin

Question 5

Please define the following key terms.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Question 6

What major economic challenges have plagued the West from the 1980s through the early twenty-first century?

Question 7

"The Iraq war was the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time." Discuss with specifics to support or refute the quotation.

Question 8

What are the basic problems and antagonisms between Serbia and the other countries that once made up Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Slovenia)? What forces in the post-Cold War world enabled this dangerous and bloody conflict to escalate so terribly?

Question 9

What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of the digital revolution? Discuss, citing specific examples.

Question 10

Was Mikhail Gorbachev responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union? If not, who or what was? Explain.

Question 11

With the world increasingly inter-connected via transportation and communication networks, does the name "Western Civilization" still make sense?

Question 12

Discuss the impact of terrorism on the West, the "Western mindset", and the relationship between western countries and the rest of the world (specifically, the Middle East).

Question 13

Compare and contrast the experiences of Russia and its Eastern European neighbors since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Question 14

How and why did the Cold War end? Did anyone "win" this conflict? Who? Why?

Question 15

Is capitalism the dominant force on the planet today? Why or why not?

Question 16

Please define the following key terms.
Nicolae Ceausescu

Question 17

How have women's lives changed by the late twentieth and early twenty-first century? What gains have they made? What obstacles still exist? In what countries have women seen the greatest gains, and which countries have been slower to change?

Question 18

Please define the following key terms.
global economy

Question 19

Please define the following key terms.
Mikhail Gorbachev

Question 20

Is the world facing a "clash of civilizations" in the near future? Why and/or why not?

Question 21

Please define the following key terms.
Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy

Question 22

Please define the following key terms.
the euro

Question 23

Please define the following key terms.
ethnic cleansing

Question 24

Please define the following key terms.
fall of the Berlin Wall

Question 25

Please define the following key terms.
the European Community/EC

Question 26

Please define the following key terms.
Kosovo

Question 27

Please define the following key terms.
Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel

Question 28

Please define the following key terms.
the European Union/EU

Question 29

Please define the following key terms.
multinational corporation (transnational corporation)

Question 30

Please define the following key terms.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown

Question 31

Please define the following key terms.
George W. Bush

Question 32

Please define the following key terms.
Office of Homeland Security

Question 33

Please define the following key terms.
Yugoslavia

Question 34

Please define the following key terms.
Czech Republic and Slovakia

Question 35

Please define the following key terms.
Bosnia

Question 36

Please define the following key terms.
Václav Havel

Question 37

Please define the following key terms.
developed nations

Question 38

Please define the following key terms.
Maastricht Treaty

Question 39

Please define the following key terms.
glastnost

Question 40

Please define the following key terms.
Bill Clinton

Question 41

Please define the following key terms.
Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds

Question 42

Please define the following key terms.
Iraq war

Question 43

Please define the following key terms.
Digital Age

Question 44

Please define the following key terms.
Jorg Haider's Freedom Party

Question 45

Please define the following key terms.
al-Qaeda

Question 46

Please define the following key terms.
Baader-Meinhof gang/Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades

Question 47

Please define the following key terms.
NGOs

Question 48

Please define the following key terms.
"Think globally, act locally"

Question 49

Please define the following key terms.
Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction

Question 50

Please define the following key terms.
Osama bin Laden

Question 51

Please define the following key terms.
George H. W. Bush and the "New World Order"

Question 52

Please define the following key terms.
developing nations

Question 53

Please define the following key terms.
Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Stephen Harper

Question 54

Please define the following key terms.
Ronald Reagan and the Cold War

Question 55

Please define the following key terms.
the Taliban and war in Afghanistan

Question 56

Please define the following key terms.
Anselm Kiefer's Departure from Egypt

Question 57

Please define the following key terms.
the Persian Gulf War

Question 58

Please define the following key terms.
Pope John Paul II

Question 59

Please define the following key terms.
guest workers

Question 60

Please define the following key terms.
September 11, 2001, and the World Trade Center

Question 61

On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked ____ airplanes as part of a planned assault on the United States.

A)two
B)three
C)four
D)five
E)six

Question 62

Please define the following key terms.
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

Question 63

Please define the following key terms.
open-forum social media

Question 64

Which area witnessed the first independence movement among the Soviet republics during Gorbachev's rule?

A)Afghanistan
B)Azerbaijan
C)Lithuania
D)Georgia
E)Chechnya

Question 65

Please define the following key terms.
Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter films

Question 66

Who was the Russian president after Boris Yeltsin?

A)Mikhail Gorbachev
B)Vladimir Putin
C)Nikita Khrushchev
D)Dmitry Medvedev
E)Gary Kasparov

Question 67

Who was the politician who kept the fractious state of Yugoslavia together for decades after World War II?

A)Marshall Tito
B)General Filopovic
C)President Milosevic
D)Prime Minister Kostunica
E)Marshall Petain

Question 68

Who succeeded Vladimir Putin as president of Russia?

A)Lech Walesa
B)Mikhail Gorbachev
C)Dmitry Medvedev
D)Yuri Andropov
E)Andrei Sakharov

Question 69

Please define the following key terms.
globalization

Question 70

Which party won nearly 50 percent of the vote in East Germany's 1990 election?

A)Nazis
B)Communists
C)Christian Democrats
D)Green Party
E)Libertarians

Question 71

Please define the following key terms.
multiculturalism

Question 72

Which dictator, known for his violent suppression of the people, was tried and executed with his wife in late December 1989?

A)Gustáv Husák
B)Václav Hável
C)Aleksander Kwasniewski
D)Nicolae Ceausescu
E)Erich Honecker

Question 73

Please define the following key terms.
global warming/greenhouse effect

Question 74

Which Eastern European republic came into existence in 1993 with the breakup of a previously existing state and which was fueled by ethnic rivalries?

A)Lithuania
B)Estonia
C)Albania
D)Lichtenstein
E)Slovakia

Question 75

What best describes the ruling policies of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union?

A)They forced the exportation of Russian Communism to Central and South America.
B)They evoked a "New Thinking" about internal and global politics, as well as an emphasis on openness and reform.
C)They increased political repression in Russia and in Eastern Europe.
D)They grew out of Russian misperceptions of United States strengths and failed to appreciate that American military spending and tax reductions under Ronald Reagan had greatly increased American budget deficits.
E)They led to a reform of Soviet Communism and the permanent strengthening of the Soviet regime.

Question 76

Which country held the first free parliamentary elections to occur in Eastern Europe for forty years in 1988?

A)Hungary
B)Austria
C)Poland
D)Estonia
E)Lithuania

Question 77

After becoming Russia's president in 1999, Vladimir Putin made it his mission to

A)decentralize power within the Russian government.
B)strengthen the role of the central government.
C)establish an independent Chechnyan government.
D)promote a more open exchange with the media.
E)raise taxes on the wealthiest members of society and stimulate the economy.

Question 78

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was plagued by all of these problems EXCEPT

A)a renewed Communist Party majority which took over the government.
B)organized crime.
C)an uprising in largely Muslim Chechnya.
D)economic hardships.
E)a president who was often ill.

Question 79

Which leader of Czechoslovakia in 1990 replaced the Communist government and was a former dissident writer and philosopher?

A)Erich Kádár
B)Gustáv Husák
C)Aleksander Dubcek
D)Václav Hável
E)Marshall Tito

Question 80

What did Mikhail Gorbachev intend to do under perestroika?

A)Frighten the United States with more military spending
B)Create a more free and open political culture in the U.S.S.R.
C)Turn all power over to the people
D)Restructure the economic and political systems
E)End communism and adopt western-style democracy