Word: ratchets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Therein lies the irony of Obama's downsizing effort: he needs to ratchet up conflicts at first - by sending more troops to Afghanistan and perhaps pushing new sanctions against Iran - to gain the diplomatic muscle to cut deals that don't look like abject American defeats. It's a risky strategy, since there's no guarantee that the bigger sticks will work, and if they don't, pulling back will be even harder. But it's a gamble Obama may have to take. The harsh truth is that the U.S. is significantly weaker in the Middle East now than...
...Until now. A widening trade dispute threatens to ratchet up tension in the China-U.S. relationship, with potential consequences for the entire world economy. The spat began on Sept. 11, when the Obama Administration announced it will slap tariffs of as much as 35% on Chinese-made tires, effectively pricing them out of the low end of the American market. Two days later, China's Ministry of Commerce said it would start antidumping investigations against imports of some U.S. chicken products and auto parts. Though the ministry's announcement made no mention of the tire tariffs, the timing...
...trip to Pyongyang evokes the never-ending back-to-the-future quality of dealing with North Korea. "They've repeated the same pattern over the past two decades," says Yun Duk-min of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul, a Foreign Ministry think tank. Ratchet up the nuclear tensions, declare diplomacy dead, and then hope to win even bigger concessions as talks reconvene later. But since taking office, Obama has proved no slouch at playing the game from the other side. In the wake of the nuclear test this past spring, the President dropped the rhetoric...
...Washington. "It is very rare for any U.S. official, [much] less the Vice President, to make concrete comments on the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities." Kupchan warned in a note on Tuesday that Iran could interpret Biden's remarks as "a proxy threat to ratchet up pressure ... and [Tehran could] react aggressively...
...damaged, too, in hardscrabble industrial regions. A fresh face might be expected to give the party a boost and could hardly perform worse. But Brown picked up the keys to 10 Downing Street from Tony Blair, and any handover of power from one unelected Prime Minister to another would ratchet up pressure from political opponents and the public for an early election. When it came to the crunch, MPs - many of whom fear losing their seats - opted to put off the moment of truth. In retrospect, that was not surprising; turkeys rarely vote for an early Christmas...