George Kennan made a lot of waves in Washington when he wrote the "Long Telegram". He did not believe that a war with the Soviet Union was the answer, and he did not promote the idea of building bases in Europe.

Kennan believed the opposite. We did not need to have a competition with the Soviet Union over the spreading of capitalism and communism. His policy of containment became a political phenomenon, and the basis of the Truman Doctrine as well as America's Cold War strategy until the Reagan administration.

NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, brought West Germany into the fold after Germany's division. East Germany aligned with Russia and other communist countries through the Warsaw Pact. Germany's division right through Berlin created two massive spheres of influence - East vs. West; communism vs. democracy - until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany was officially reunified in 1990.

In the 1970s, a massive amount of the world's untapped oil was underneath the Middle Eastern countries. There was a gold rush decades earlier - efforts by western oil companies to take control of the oil operations and distribution.

Multiple companies had signed the Red Line Agreement - so maybe the oil companies could be called Red Liners, but _not "_Blue Liners". The answers "oil barons" and "Middle East managers" are not recognized monikers for any group of oil companies in this instance. OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) is the organization that was formed in order to embolden and unify the countries that had massive oil reserves and minuscule authority over their own resources. At its point of origin, OPEC consisted of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and from South America, Venezuela.

The seven sisters is the name that was given to the Western oil companies that had established a considerable foothold in the Middle Eastern oil market. The companies included: Standard Oil of California, New Jersey (Exxon), and New York (Mobil); Texaco, Gulf, Royal Dutch / Shell, and BP (British Petroleum).

"Big Stick" Diplomacy refers to Teddy Roosevelt, the American president most commonly associated with aggressive shows of strength. Roosevelt argued that a good leader should speak softly, and carry a big stick. The big stick referring to the coercive strength needed to backup threats and diplomatic appearances.

The Truman Doctrine defined American living and government as the most righteous and effective in the world, and the Soviet Union had the worst, most oppressive government and ideologies.

The policy of containment had been enacted with the invocation of the Truman Doctrine, where America's strategy was not to engage the Soviet Union in military conflict, but rather to lead the world by example and promote growth within American borders.

Both the American and Soviet government believed that each had the proper form of government and society not just for their own respective nations, but also the world.

Throughout the initial decades of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union continued to acquire more and more nuclear weapons until each nation possessed the capacity to destroy the planet many times over. In an attempt to mitigate this massive threat to humanity, the two superpowers signed a treaty in 1972 designed to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons possessed by both nations. This took place during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

While the Monroe Doctrine is named after James Monroe, this was simply because James Monroe was president at the time. The author of the doctrine was the Secretary of State at the time, John Quincy Adams. Monroe was the Secretary of State before Adams.

Appeasement is the term given to making concessions to a political or military rival in order to prevent said rival from doing something even worse. It has long been a controversial form of making policy and is most notable in US History for America’s reaction to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931.

NATO was created in 1949 as an alliance of the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Turkey to meet the perceived threat of the Soviet Union and the rise of communism. It was primarily a military alliance. Its opposition was the Warsaw Pact, which was formed shortly afterwards between Russia and the communist nations of the Eastern Bloc.

American exceptionalism is the concept that America stands apart from the rest of the world as the prime example of a modern society. The values represented in the Constitution and the fruitful government-citizen relationship creates a unique profile for a country - both presently and historically. The American profile is a colossal one that has helped to spread democratic ideals across the world, and has in turn created a sense of exceptionalism within American borders, among citizens.

Isolationism involves the concept a country separating from the rest of the world, but includes that country withdrawing from the majority of global diplomacy, international trade, and foreign wars. Isolationism does not immediately mean that a country is exceptional.

The Washington Consensus is a set of economic policies and conditionality is a set of conditions a country must meet before receiving foreign aid - both being unrelated to this question.

Finally, unilateralism (in regards to foreign affairs) is when a country commits an act across international borders without a consensus from other affected, regional, or world powers.