Word: brinkmanship
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Young Daniel Ellsberg (James Spader) is one of the Rand Corp.'s best and brightest, writing papers for the think tank that advocate brinkmanship and "the political uses of madness" in the cold war. In 1964 his work takes him to the Pentagon, where he sees madness in action. He learns that the entire war policy, in effect, is a mess swept under a carpet of inflated enemy body counts. Asked to help write a history of the war effort, he finds that the U.S. has remained hopelessly entangled because no President wanted to be the first U.S. leader...
...said that if North Korea stopped making atomic weapons he would consider a "bold initiative" to provide energy and food to the country - the first time Washington has signaled its willingness to engage Pyongyang. A belligerent response, however, indicated that North Korea is not interested in retreating from the brinkmanship that has led it to kick out international nuclear inspectors and withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Bush's "loudmouthed supply of energy and food aid are like pie in the sky, as they are possible only after [North Korea] is totally disarmed." Meanwhile...
...offer as a "deceptive drama to mislead world opinion") but analysts interpret the remarks as typically shrill North Korean bargaining. Pyongyang will try and hold out for a formal non-aggression pact, while the Bush Administration will likely offer some lesser form of written security guarantee. But the nuclear brinkmanship appears designed primarily as a negotiating tactic to pressure the U.S. and its allies into new concessions...
...broke down at both ends: The North Koreans sought new ways of producing weapons-grade nuclear fuel via centrifuges, and trashed the spirit of rapprochement by test-firing missiles over Japan; but the U.S. and its allies also failed to deliver on the promised energy assistance. Now, North Korean brinkmanship has put both sides have found themselves back on the path to a confrontation neither can afford, which has forced them to revisit their agreement...
...spite of the North's increasingly menacing brinkmanship, South Korea advocates a diplomatic strategy markedly different from that of the U.S. While the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is inclined to force North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to heel by isolating him and imposing harsh sanctions, Seoul is pushing assistance and engagement?and it wants the U.S. to negotiate with Kim before he goes too far. Youthful South Koreans like Lee favor this approach. "They are rejecting the Cold War mentality and deliberately setting out on a new course," says Kim Kyung Won, former South Korean ambassador...