"Free World" is a Cold War-era term often used to describe countries that were not in the sphere of influence of, or allied with communist states, particularly the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. It is often used interchangeably with "First World".
The term usually refers to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and organizations such as the European Union and NATO. In addition, the "Free World" occasionally includes the Commonwealth realms, Japan, Israel, and India.
Authoritarian and dictatorial states were also included in the "Free World", provided that they were either capitalistic or anti-communist. Notable examples include Spain under Francisco Franco, apartheid-era South Africa, and Greece under the military junta of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Read more about Free World: Origins, Recent Usage, Criticism, "Leader of The Free World", In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or world:
“There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slaves are free from their masters.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 3:17-19.
“Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man’s image will now be transformed to the image of woman. The more technical and mechanical, cold and metallic it becomes, the more it will need the kind of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweiblich, the eternally feminine!”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)