Word: direction
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This increasing truculence is a direct reflection of a rapidly shifting economic balance of power. One of the consequences of the financial crisis of 2008-09 was the catapulting of China to the forefront of the global economic system. That trend wasn't created by the crisis, but the crisis certainly accelerated it. As the U.S., Europe and Japan contracted sharply, China registered its own brief, if scary, dip and then proceeded to use its trillions in foreign reserves to undertake a massive spending program. More effective than similar stimulus packages in the United States and elsewhere, the approach...
...from crossing; it has for the first time recognized Lebanon's sovereignty by opening an embassy in Beirut (Damascus has traditionally regarded its neighbor as a Syrian province illegitimately turned into a separate entity by France in the wake of World War I); and it has regularly called for direct peace talks with Israel. The reappointment of an ambassador would be of a piece with the Obama Administration's strategic policy to engage its adversaries, and with wider U.S. geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Though the Bush Administration first toyed with toppling the Assad regime and then settled...
...front. Having separated themselves from an ever hostile Palestinian population by withdrawing from Gaza and walling off the West Bank, the Israelis have lost interest in land-for-peace deals. So not only are Israeli-Palestinian peace talks largely moribund, but the Netanyahu government has dodged Syrian requests for direct talks, calling instead for indirect talks whose goal would be to agree to a cessation of hostilities rather than a return of the Golan Heights. That's a nonstarter for Damascus; no Syrian government could make peace without recovering the Syrian territory Israel occupies...
...Campbell, the front runner in the polls for the GOP nomination, was not a true fiscal conservative. Rather, he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a "fiscal conservative in name only." The Campbell campaign responded by deploying its new-media consultant, Mindy Finn, on Twitter to try to direct the viral buzz. "If the GOP has any hope of taking back the senate it won't be by accusing each other of being #demonsheep," she wrote in one post, having already rated the spot a "marketing fail...
...line force in the battle against the Pakistan Taliban, to help improve its poor counterinsurgency capability. In 2008, Washington dispatched 100 military personnel to train Pakistani officers, who would in turn pass on their skills to rank-and-file soldiers; but local sensitivities precluded the Americans from being given direct access to the troops. As U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters in Washington, "There is nothing secret about their presence there...