Word: vacuum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...conspirators, Egypt's Nasser and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, as well as military aid from Moscow and Peking. Kaunda wants no part of it. He believes there is real danger that Rhodesia could explode into a worldwide "racial or ideological war" unless Britain itself fills the military vacuum in Zambia. Only the British, he figures, could enter Rhodesia without spreading the war. The British, of course, say they have no intention of sending troops into Rhodesia, but Prime Minister Harold Wilson was seriously considering flying in at least a token R.A.F. contingent to man the key air strips...
Thus while American troops may succeed, at great cost, in driving the Communists from certain regions, American officials in Saigon will still be confronted with a political vacuum once the fighting is over. Furthermore, while American saturation bombing of the countryside may have boosted morale in Saigon itself, such terror has certainly not endeared the Saigon government to the rural population, which is the central strategic task...
...consensus can survive in a vacuum. By continuing to withhold the testimony of his own officials, the President may succeed in keeping ammunition from his enemies, but he cannot hope to gain popular acceptance for his policies. Rather than ending debate or criticism, his policy of secrecy only insures that both will be uninformed...
...armored personnel carriers, artillery and a thousand infantrymen crept in by road, a helicopter landing force of 250 Vietnamese Rangers dropped boldly into Plei Me at first light. Commanded by burly, boulder-bellied U.S. Army Major Charles H. Beckwith, 36, of Atlanta, the Rangers quickly filled the vacuum caused by the Reds' initial assault...
...resulted in catastrophe. Test flights, however, would have been both costly and timeconsuming, and the Agena's previous record of reliability made them seem unduly wasteful. An identical twin of the lost rocket had been extensively checked on the ground, fired in a test stand, put in a vacuum chamber to simulate operating altitudes, started and restarted until all the glitches seemed gone. The fact is, says one of the country's top rocket-motor experts, that "sometimes these birds just flop-even though the chances are something like 9 in 10 that it won't happen...