Word: avert
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...avert that kind of chain reaction, the Bush Administration is trying to dissuade the republics from making proprietary claims to whatever weapons of mass destruction remain within their borders once the latest arms-cut agreement is implemented. When traveling to the U.S.S.R. or receiving Soviet visitors in Washington, American officials issue a blunt warning: U.S. political and economic support for the republics will depend on their willingness to leave control over all nuclear forces firmly in the hands of the central government...
Ever since President Bush announced plans to visit Hawaii for the 50th anniversary of the PEARL HARBOR attack, the government of Toshiki Kaifu has been scrambling to avert a fresh round of Japan bashing. Kaifu's advisers have suggested that when Bush travels to Tokyo as scheduled in late November, he pay a respectful call on Hiroshima. Some have even hinted that Bush, a World War II fighter pilot who was shot down by the Japanese in 1944, should take Kaifu with him to Pearl Harbor to symbolize how two old enemies are now allies. But White House officials vehemently...
...civil war, resulting in the breakup of the union, may occur if the central authorities deny the right of national self-determination and thus provoke secessionist explosions across the country. Or Russian nationalists could deliberately stimulate secessionism. But history could help us avert such a disaster. We experienced civil war at the beginning of this century. Perhaps the vividness of that memory will deter us from repeating the same mistake at the end of this century...
Mikhail Gorbachev specializes in the politics of the impossible. Even his job description -- to preside over a country that is falling apart -- is a contradiction in terms: . He may be the most widely disliked figure in the Soviet Union, yet he is convinced that he alone can avert outright warfare among tribes and factions that hate one another even more than they hate...
Then there's the question of prepositioning for the postwar order. Bush rightly fears that if Saddam lives to fight another day, the U.S.'s friends -- especially Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- will be in danger. Gorbachev calculates, just as correctly, that if he helps Iraq avert a cataclysmic defeat, the Soviet Union will have considerable influence over, and claim on, a state that everyone agrees must remain a major player in the area. He will also have enhanced Soviet standing in the eyes of those countries, like Pakistan, where opposition to the anti-Saddam coalition is growing...