Word: spat
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...China-U.S. diplomatic spat over cyberattacks on Google has highlighted the growing significance of the Internet as a theater of combat. Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn recently warned of its appeal to foes who are unable to match the U.S.'s conventional military might. An enemy country could deploy hackers to take down U.S. financial systems, communications and infrastructure, he suggested, at a cost far below that of building a trillion-dollar fleet of fifth-generation jet fighters. "Knowing this, many militaries are developing offensive cyber capabilities," Lynn said. "Some governments already have the capacity to disrupt elements...
...Then late last year, the spat escalated when Russia decided that Belarus no longer deserved its energy subsidies. When the two countries' existing oil contract expired on Dec. 31, Russia demanded additional payments of a whopping $2.5 billion, which amounts to about 5% of Belarus' entire economy. The Russian government also hinted that in order to keep oil prices down, Belarus should give Moscow a stake in its energy infrastructure - namely the oil refineries it uses to process oil for resale to Europe. This would play into Russia's larger aim of controlling the energy supply chain from...
...Syria and signed a raft of agreements with each country designed to improve trade and cultural exchange. Since publicly chastising Israeli President Shimon Peres over Gaza at a conference in Switzerland last January, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a hero on Arab streets, and the latest diplomatic spat with Israel won't do his popularity any harm. Beirut daily Al Akhbar's headline on the Ayalon apology story praised "Sultan Erdogan" and exalted that "Israel understands only Turkish...
...spat may be a minor compared to incidents in the past - the two countries fought a bloody border war in 1979, and in 1988 a naval battle near the Spratlys left 70 Vietnamese sailors dead. But it comes amid a steady buildup of Chinese might in the region. Ralf Emmers, an expert on the South China Sea and associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, says the Chinese tourism gambit is a move "to make its sovereignty claims over these islands a fait accompli." Vietnam watchers point to an escalation of tensions since...
...Given the stakes in the diplomatic spat, Ayalon's defiance potentially carried a high cost. But it took a behind-the-scenes intervention of the proverbial grownup in the Israeli establishment - President Shimon Peres, who served for decades as Israel's key diplomat - to orchestrate a climbdown. Peres called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman and urged them to defuse the crisis. But domestic politics was in play: not only was Ayalon's initial action calculated to burnish the nationalist appeal of his and Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party, but Netanyahu's need to maintain that party...