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Defensive in sentence

277 examples of Defensive in a sentence

But such a defensive posture is bound to be unstable, due to pan-Arab feelings.
Beyond that defensive attitude, lack of policy consensus has resulted in a preference for the status quo.
Meanwhile, capital is flooding into the higher-interest-rate emerging markets, causing inflationary pressures, driving up asset prices, and subjecting currencies to competitiveness-threatening appreciation – in short, distortions and policy headaches that require unconventional, defensive responses.
The Germans play with “discipline,” the Italians with the defensive strength of Roman warriors, the Dutch with free-spirited individualism, the Spanish with the elegance of toreadors, and so on.
Italians have abandoned their defensive tactics.
As the dust settles from the shock waves of the financial crisis, and with trends pointing towards the US-China axis as the key motor of the global economy, Europe is clearly in a more defensive frame of mind.
After years of weak Western and United Nations response to Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, United States-led NATO bombing had put the Serbs on the defensive.
We are in the midst of one of those historic shifts when offensive technologies are cheaper and more powerful than defensive ones.
The immediate diplomatic impact, of course, was to reshape Eurasia’s geopolitical balance and put the Soviet Union on the defensive.
It was an important moment in China’s evolution from a defensive to an offensive player on the international scene.
Parfit’s entirely secular arguments, and the comprehensive way in which he tackles alternative positions, have, for the first time in decades, put those who reject objectivism in ethics on the defensive.
Moreover, the Obama administration, by having reset US foreign policy, removed the principal irritants in Russia-Western relations, such as the prospect of NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia; close relations with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and plans for the deployment of US defensive missiles in Central Europe.
Their approach, a concept called “Air-Sea Battle,” implies a mix of defensive and offensive tools to address the new challenges posed by the proliferation of precision-strike weaponry.
That struggle is complicated by the virtual impossibility of distinguishing between offensive and defensive intentions.
The "Sunshine Policy" is on the defensive in South Korean domestic politics, too.
Netanyahu, always on the defensive, does not view Middle East turmoil as a trigger for a proactive strategy that would use a solution to the Palestinian problem as leverage for broader positive change in the region.
For example, while the likelihood of an invasion threat is judged to be low, the Defense White Paper of 2004 argues that the SDF’s “most fundamental function” is to prepare for the worst, because sufficient defensive power cannot be developed overnight.
The problem for Italian officials, as for the other governments concerned by the recent migration flows, is the pressure of right-wing populist parties, which no longer need to be on the defensive.
The implication is that hostility toward foreigners in eastern Germany – and perhaps across Europe – may be rooted partly in a primordial defensive response by local men, who want to protect their territory, including “their” women, from other men.
Cyber attacks take place in a medium, cyberspace, where offensive actions have an advantage over defensive ones.
But after the implosion of communism, the situation in Europe was more or less reversed: the defensive demarcation of borders has been replaced by the removal of frontiers across the Continent.
The company recently published a long, defensive blog post responding to what it described as a “full-throated endorsement” of fossil-fuel divestment by Mary Robinson, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy for climate change.
Tariffs would immediately hurt American consumers, and defensive, retaliatory responses from other countries could fatally undermine already feeble world trade, thus choking off a critical source of global prosperity.
With Tusk forced to remain on the defensive, Polish politics came to consist of the PiS and the anti-PiS.
Indeed, the ECB already has been driven onto the defensive by the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, financial-market analysts, and Anglo-Saxon economists in the wake of feverish discussion of the risk of deflation in the eurozone.
Furthermore, if regionalism comes to be perceived as coercive and unfriendly, countries could form defensive trade blocs, leading to economic fragmentation and heightened security tension.
The UN should have put Mugabe on the defensive with a forceful public offer to help Zimbabwe prepare for internationally supervised elections.
In this case, it is through the West agreeing with Saudi Arabia to arm the Free Syrian Army with the defensive weapons that it needs to ground Bashar al-Assad’s aircraft and immobilize his tanks and artillery.
Because those same Russians regard the war in Ukraine as defensive and just, war becomes justified; history’s dark pages are rewritten; and hostile language becomes the norm.
And the less convinced people are about their future, the more they tend to focus on their identity in a negative, defensive manner.
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