Word: toughness
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...Tough talk was no substitute for policy, however. As Washington ratcheted up the pressure, so did Pyongyang, a longtime master at playing a weak hand brilliantly. North Korea threw out international inspectors and restarted its weapons program, once again reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods. Pyongyang even upped the ante by hinting that it had a uranium-enrichment program paralleling its plutonium one. And it chose to end eight years of a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing on July 4, 2006 - American Independence...
...allow Dick Cheney and his alarming chief of staff, David Addington, to abandon the Geneva Conventions and engage in the most gruesome forms of torture. You can easily see Charlie Blackwell - whose (inaccurate) notion of the efficacy of torture would have been shaped by Hollywood - passing off the tough and the ugly jobs to his number...
...powerful reinforcement of McCain's own political brand: tough, reform-minded, willing to break with his own party for the right cause. And it's true that her high-profile crusade against corruption and complacency in her own state party over the past few years has made Palin the Frank Serpico of Alaska politics: she publicly ratted out her state party chairman; whupped the good old boys' network, as she likes to put it, in a gubernatorial primary; and fought a general election in which the scandal-stained state GOP didn't lift a finger on her behalf...
...limited E.U. response was partly due to splits amongst the leaders. Britain and most of the new E.U. members from the east wanted tough sanctions to punish Moscow. However, even the most bullish amongst them recognized the limited impact of possible measures like blocking Russia's plans to join the World Trade Organization, or throwing...
...result was familiar fudge: a common statement that tried to sound tough without actually threatening real damage. The fiercest it got was to say, "In the meantime, the Union will not take any action to reinforce the relationship with Russia." Instead of projecting common resolve in the face of Russian it seemed to reinforce the sense of impotence felt by the E.U. - like the U.N. and NATO and other international organizations - in the face of Russia's actions...