How to Use brinkmanship in a Sentence

brinkmanship

noun
  • The pause in brinkmanship reflects the quandary now facing Beijing.
    Jim Puzzanghera, latimes.com, 11 July 2018
  • If his trade brinkmanship so far is any indication, the president seems willing to risk these dire results.
    James Bacchus, WSJ, 12 July 2018
  • The insults and nuclear brinkmanship alarmed other world leaders, who feared war and a new nuclear arms race.
    Anne Gearan, chicagotribune.com, 23 June 2018
  • Uncertain Times To be sure, the risks of Trump’s brinkmanship shouldn’t be ignored.
    Andrew Mayeda, Bloomberg.com, 24 May 2018
  • The threat of sanctions—and how strictly the U.S. plans to apply them—is part of the brinkmanship of negotiations.
    Sarah Kent, WSJ, 8 May 2018
  • Still in his 30s (like much about him and his country, his exact age is a mystery), he may be daunted by the bleak prospect of a lifetime of nuclear brinkmanship.
    The Economist, 14 June 2018
  • The sweetening tone was just the latest change in a roller-coaster game of brinkmanship — talks about talks with two unpredictable world leaders trading threats and blandishments.
    Washington Post, 26 May 2018
  • The brinkmanship is not unusual and is often baked into government budget negotiations with threats of a shutdown serving as catalysts to last-minute deals.
    Nick Corasaniti, New York Times, 28 June 2018
  • The World Trade Organization was created to prevent exactly this kind of bluffing and brinkmanship.
    Bloomberg.com, 21 June 2018
  • One big wild card for the Fed is the brinkmanship over the debt ceiling.
    Ben Casselman, New York Times, 26 May 2023
  • Their brinkmanship has played out against the backdrop of their re-election bids.
    J. David Goodman, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2022
  • Guthrie would find this kind of brinkmanship troubling.
    Mark Allan Jackson, The Conversation, 17 May 2023
  • The brinkmanship has to end, and there shouldn't be another crisis.
    Asher Notheis, Washington Examiner, 1 Oct. 2023
  • The same is true of McCarthy’s dangerous brinkmanship with funding for the war in Ukraine.
    Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2023
  • That kind of fiscal brinkmanship has persisted in the years since.
    Bryan Mena, CNN, 2 Aug. 2023
  • Their brinkmanship has played out against the backdrop of their reelection bids.
    Michael C. Bender, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Sep. 2022
  • The brinkmanship over the plant comes as both sides struggle to make meaningful gains on the battlefield.
    Isabel Coles, WSJ, 27 Aug. 2022
  • The brinkmanship between Tehran and Washington is getting all the more tense.
    Washington Post, 29 June 2021
  • But this act of brinkmanship also increases the chance of the U.K. leaving without a deal at all.
    Alexander Smith, NBC News, 19 Dec. 2019
  • That Simeone’s team had been able to run City so close was not despite its brinkmanship, but because of it.
    New York Times, 13 Apr. 2022
  • The game of arithmetic brinkmanship every EV owner plays is up.
    Alistair Charlton, Wired, 24 Feb. 2022
  • The Russian leader has a history of brinkmanship and prior buildups on the border have come to naught.
    Jennifer Jacobs, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Nov. 2021
  • There’s a lot of brinkmanship and things like that, because the Whisperers are so different.
    Dalton Ross, EW.com, 15 July 2019
  • Ten years later, that ol’ debt ceiling brinkmanship has returned with a vengeance.
    Patrick Caldwell, The New Republic, 6 Dec. 2021
  • As a result, the next round of debt limit brinkmanship could be the most fraught on record — as evidenced by the battle over the speakership.
    Jim Tankersley, BostonGlobe.com, 7 Jan. 2023
  • As a result, the next round of debt-limit brinkmanship could be the most fraught on record — as evidenced by the battle over the speakership.
    Jim Tankersley, New York Times, 7 Jan. 2023
  • So the world is watching these trade talks between the U.S. and China and there seems to be this brinkmanship game over tariffs underway.
    CBS News, 13 Aug. 2021
  • That number was enough for Mrs. Pelosi to avoid pointless brinkmanship over the past two years and pass an ambitious agenda for Mr. Biden.
    The Editorial Board, WSJ, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Moody’s cited a string of recent red flags, including brinkmanship over the debt limit, the ouster of the House speaker and rising threats of another government shutdown.
    Abha Bhattarai, Washington Post, 10 Nov. 2023
  • Even without firing a nuclear weapon, China could mobilize or brandish its missiles, bombers and submarines to warn other countries against the risks of escalating into brinkmanship.
    Chris Buckley, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'brinkmanship.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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