Word: deter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sept. 11, a virtual state proved that modern societies are vulnerable as never before--vulnerable because both the advanced technologies and civil openness they have worked so successfully to develop can be used against them. The U.S. has learned over the years how to deter threats from adversaries like the Soviet Union; now it must learn how to stop the more elusive threat posed by virtual states. To understand how protracted such struggles can be, it's worth taking a quick look back...
...that rely on defense, focus on reducing our vulnerabilities and include the option of pre-emptive attack. It is not fear of attack from Iraq that moves the Bush Administration to seek a regime change there and to threaten a first strike. After all, the U.S. was able to deter the Soviet Union; it should not have much trouble deterring Iraq. The real fear is that such an enemy may seek to coerce the U.S. by passing weapons of mass destruction to a virtual state such as al-Qaeda, which cannot be deterred...
...worth looking at what happened the night the government moved Padilla, because it's part of a larger change in American society since Sept. 11. Six weeks after the World Trade Center fell, Congress passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which was designed "[t]o deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes." The legislation gave Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft a license to expand the scope of their authority, and they have used their new powers, plus a few old ones, to detain more...
...West Bank the brother and sister of the Palestinian organizer of a suicide bombing and force them to live in the Gaza Strip. The judges ruled that a relative of a terrorist could be forced from home only if there was a danger to Israeli security, not just to deter others. International human-rights groups and Palestinian officials decried the decision as authorizing the use of collective punishment...
...home, first use provoked protest from the pacifist left, most dramatically against President Reagan, who was portrayed as a nuclear cowboy. This was silly. The doctrine of first use made perfect sense. It kept the peace. It also demonstrated the peculiar utility of otherwise unusable nuclear weapons: to deter a conventional attack...