Word: ratchet
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...Washington is plainly having to give more attention than it had expected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Are they going to have to ratchet up involvement? Yes. Will they become as involved as President Clinton was? No. They're going to do the minimum possible, but that minimum has gotten bigger. Every administration comes in vowing not to get sucked in to the Middle East, and every administration ends up getting more involved than it had planned to. Because in the end you're left with a choice: Either you control events or events control...
...President Bush, it must be said, looked awkward and uncertain those first two days of the Hainan standoff. He talked tough, or tough-ish, but that appeared to only ratchet up the rhetoric from Beijing. He'd previously signaled his intention to play hardball with China, and had hoped to downgrade the central role the Middle Kingdom had played in the Clinton administration's Asia policy. Suddenly, here were the Chinese in his face, testing his resolve. And with the immediate fate of 24 U.S. personnel - and a relationship of profound geopolitical and economic consequence - at stake, there was precious...
...first time in Kosovo today, after blowing up a supply route used by Albanian separatist guerrillas who've been mounting provocative attacks across the border inside Serbia. Are the changes under way in Washington and the coming elections for the Yugoslav parliament prompting the region's Albanian nationalists to ratchet up their campaign for independence for Kosovo...
...While Israeli leaders such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu are pressing Prime Minister Ehud Barak to ratchet up the economic pressure on the Palestinians - for example, taking advantage of the fact that Israel still controls water and electricity supplies to the territories under Yasser Arafat's control - others share the concerns of international monitors over the long-term effect of such a strategy. After all, the declining economic circumstances make it a lot easier for Hamas to recruit young men as suicide bombers, its promise of the paradise of martyrdom holding considerably more allure amidst squalor and hopelessness than...
...Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat are burning the almost completely collapsed bridges that lead back to the peace process. Israeli helicopters launched new rocket attacks on Palestinian Authority buildings in the West Bank and Gaza overnight, making good on warnings by the Israeli defense minister that Israel plans to ratchet up its level of force in dealing with what he described as "guerrilla warfare" by the Palestinians. And Arafat responded that the raids could not "shake one eyelash from the eyelashes of a Palestinian child holding a Palestinian stone to defend holy Jerusalem." And as if the image of Israeli...