Word: adroitness
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...current political vacuum, however, is of Yeltsin's own making and reflects his philosophy of power. "Boris Yeltsin never really fully trusts anyone," said an official who has watched him closely for years. "He is very adroit at manipulating the friendships and animosities of those around him." Yeltsin's distrust of others and his gift for manipulation found its expression in the 1993 constitution. Drawn up at the height of Yeltsin's confrontation with the legislature, the constitution gave the President broad and vaguely defined prerogatives. The aim was to ensure that he, and only he, controlled all the levers...
...have happened to the President. It forced him to discipline his naturally roving mind to focus not on dreams of the future but on what is attainable here and now. That, however, was no longer very much. For the past two years Clinton has largely been playing defense--very adroit defense--against Gingrichian zealotry. He cast 15 vetoes in 1995 and 1996, vs. none at all in 1993-94, and held out through two government shutdowns to force congressional Republicans to drop their deepest proposed spending cuts...
...Tokyo too Clinton did some adroit and necessary fence mending. Earlier he had emphasized bitter confrontations about trade even more than the U.S.-Japanese security alliance. Last week he switched just about all the way back. He announced that the U.S. would keep its 100,000 troops in the Pacific to help guarantee stability. For its part, Japan has agreed to provide more help--possibly with food, fuel and the use of its own bases--to the 47,000 U.S. troops there...
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 73, is spreading the word that he just might run for another five-year term as U.N. Secretary-General this fall. The headstrong diplomat's adroit dispensation of U.N. patronage could make him formidable, and he would probably be supported by President Hosni Mubarak of his native Egypt and French President Jacques Chirac. That prospect rattles members of the Clinton Administration, since Bob Dole gets applause by pillorying Boutros-Ghali as an architect of Clinton's foreign policy. The Administration does not yet have an alternative, but may try to dissuade Boutros-Ghali by threatening to exercise...
...example of a self-organizing system that teeter-totters on the knife edge between order and chaos, "a grand compromise between structure and surprise." Too much order makes change impossible; too much chaos and there can be no continuity. But since balancing acts are necessarily precarious, even the most adroit tightrope walkers sometimes make one move too many. Mass extinctions, chaos theory suggests, do not require comets or volcanoes to trigger them. They arise naturally from the intrinsic instability of the evolving system, and superior fitness provides no safety...