Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit rather than concede.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun the policy or practise of pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster (to the limits of safety), in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome; -- used especially of diplomatic maneuvers in crisis situations, and originally applied to the policies of John Foster Dulles under President Eisenhower.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Pursuit of an
advantage byappearing to bewilling torisk a dangerous policy rather than concede a point.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the policy of pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster (to the limits of safety)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Dulles’s willingness to take risks, at least verbally, attached the word brinkmanship to him.
Staying Tuned Daniel Schorr 2001
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Dulles’s willingness to take risks, at least verbally, attached the word brinkmanship to him.
Staying Tuned Daniel Schorr 2001
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Dulles’s willingness to take risks, at least verbally, attached the word brinkmanship to him.
Staying Tuned Daniel Schorr 2001
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The stakes are high for both Harper and Ignatieff, and with the new polling numbers brinkmanship is inevitable.
Archive 2009-01-01 2009
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So maybe Apple's anticompetitive brinkmanship is actually the best thing that could happen for everyone?
Android 2.2 Will Officially Support Flash 10.1 | Lifehacker Australia 2010
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"Less belligerent in its audience pandering than its predecessors (less fart jokes, less homophobic subtext, and - thank Jesus - less squawking from Eddie Murphy), Shrek the Third may not give haters a migraine, but its lobotomized sense of comic brinkmanship is still without fun."
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South Korean critics claim such brinkmanship is shortsighted.
No Pain, No Gain? 2007
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Unspoken, yet unmistakable in all the brinkmanship was the 2012 election campaign, still 18 months away, with the White House and both houses of Congress at stake.
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Unspoken, yet unmistakable in all the brinkmanship was the 2012 election campaign, still 18 months away, with the White House and both houses of Congress at stake.
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Unspoken, yet unmistakable in all the brinkmanship was the 2012 election campaign, still 18 months away, with the White House and both houses of Congress at stake.
maenki commented on the word brinkmanship
brinkmanship pol. = Politik am Rande des Abgrunds; Politik des äußersten Risikos
September 4, 2009