Word: scanted
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Particularly since the 1962 Cuban missile debacle, which helped hasten the fall of Nikita Khrushchev, Moscow has played for smaller stakes at great cost and scant return (see box). One investment it could not liquidate, however, was the Middle East. With the decline of Western influence and the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1950s, the volatile, petroliferous Moslem world became an irresistible and comparatively safe target for Russia's rulers. Their main goal, in the Middle East as elsewhere, was to displace U.S. influence. The ultimate cost of Russia's aid to the Arab world was between $3 billion...
...Soviet news outlets gave the initial meeting, scant notice. Radio Moscow waited until midnight before announcing that the meeting had ever been held...
...KOREA. Stalin thought that the southern half of the divided country-a scant 120 miles from Japan-was ripe for plucking in 1950. Truman's decision to intervene, with United Nations support, frustrated that attempt. While Korea was no victory for the U.S., the stalemate that resulted prevented the Russians from achieving their original objective...
...VIET NAM. Though the U.S. is deeply and painfully embroiled in Viet Nam, the Southeast Asian war has yielded scant prospect of benefit for Moscow either. Kosygin and Communist Boss Leonid Brezhnev, reversing Khrushchev's policy of noninvolvement in Southeast Asia, began aiding Hanoi early in 1965, when a Viet Cong victory seemed imminent. Large-scale U.S. intervention thwarted their hopes of a quick, cheap victory and exposed Russia to the charge that it will retreat from its involvement in any war of national liberation if the stakes get too high...
Russian leaders are torn between the two policies. As a result, Russia has made scant headway along either course. Certainly, the Soviets' client states have grown increasingly skeptical of Moscow's interest in their cherished "wars of liberation." By contrast, the overwhelming U.S. commitment to South Viet Nam has persuaded many nations in Asia and elsewhere that Washington is willing to support its commitments...