Add the two global challenges, and you have a Gordian knot: We have to produce much more energy with much less CO2.

Advocates of cutting the Gordian knot between private and public finance recognize that governments’ approach to banks must change radically if this separation is to work.

As Americans and others look at this Gordian knot of public policy problems, we should learn one thing from the example of Tony Snow: the vision of an “ownership society” espoused by Bush is simply not plausible.

There seems little chance that this Gordian knot can be cut in Chicago.

Breaking the Gordian knot of climate negotiations requires offering technology and financial transfers in exchange for the ability to overrun a national budget.

The tougher challenge is to solve the Gordian knot that binds Hezbollah (and the issue of its disarmament), Syria, and Israel together in a fateful triangle.

Perhaps the president of the European Commission should try to cut this Gordian knot.

This Gordian knot needs to be cut, not untied.

This Gordian knot cannot be untied; it needs to be cut by robust third-party mediation.

When so many lies – with so much political capital invested in their perpetuation – coalesce, disentangling them requires a swift coup, akin to Alexander cutting the Gordian knot.

Gordian in sentence

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