Word: straits
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...example, when the French were fighting in Viet Nam, he foresaw nothing but swamps. "I'm convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind of theater," he noted. In 1955 members of his Cabinet predicted imminent war with Red China in the Formosa Strait. Ike knew better: "I have so often been through these periods of strain that I have become accustomed to the fact that most of the calamities that we anticipate really never occur...
...seized the islands at the close of World War II, but Japan still claims them. This newly strengthened Soviet outpost includes Mi-24 assault helicopters, among the most sophisticated antitank gunships in the world and therefore an obvious threat to the Japanese armored units stationed just across the Nemuro Strait on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido...
These Soviet moves make ominous sense when seen on a map: the Korea Strait, at the southern end of the Sea of Japan, is a key link between the Siberian home ports of the Soviet Pacific fleet at Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk in the north and the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Viet Nam to the south. That American-built facility has fulfilled the Soviets' long-held, often frustrated desire for a warm-water naval base halfway between Vladivostok and the politically volatile, economically vital Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean region, where the superpowers are now circling each other...
...gateway between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean-and the choke point through which passes virtually all of the Middle Eastern oil on which Japan's economy depends-is the Strait of Malacca, a channel 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Here too Soviet naval activity has been on the rise, in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Soviet destroyers, cruisers and diesel-powered, torpedo-firing Foxtrot submarines have been passing through the strait at the rate of about six a month, while nuclear-powered Echo-class...
...slowly filling courtroom. Hospitality committee members scoot around distributing miniature American flags and pins and ushers frantically direct the noisy audience of friends and family to their seats. Only the immigrants remain almost ominously silent as they line up at the doorway and wait to pass through the strait of naturalization tables lining the entrance to the courtroom. Many of them refuse to answer questions, saying the procedure means nothing to them but an afternoon off from work. But many describe with relish their new lives in the United States and their reasons for seeking citizenship. For most...