Word: avert
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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...
...would be overthrown and assassinated by his own people if he withdrew unconditionally from Kuwait." Though many experts doubt that this would happen, the dictator might have to be convinced that he runs an even greater risk of being killed in a war that only a complete pullout could avert...
...insurance per bank; in the S&L bailout, some big customers are being repaid the full $100,000 for each of several accounts in a single institution. Yet any move to cut back this blanket coverage could lead to the type of bank panics that the FDIC sought to avert in New England. "You only exacerbate the problem of runs when you limit insurance," says Lawrence White, a New York University economist who advocates bailing out all depositors at failed banks in the name of fairness...
...booster for Turkey and other allied preparations were meant not only to ensure a successful war effort but also to try to avert the battle by frightening Saddam into retreat. Bush's brinkmanship strategy assumes three things: 1) Saddam wants to survive, 2) he can change his mind if he thinks his survival depends on it, and 3) he will not act until the gun is at his head, with the hammer cocked and the trigger finger already squeezing...