Word: overstretched
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Throughout the 1980s, American critics have attacked the Reagan Doctrine as too grandiose and expensive an undertaking for the U.S. They saw it as a form of imperial overstretch, to use the now famous phrase of Professor Paul Kennedy. This critique is unintelligible. The effects of the Reagan Doctrine have been precisely the reverse. It turned out to be an extremely cost- effective form of Western resistance to the Soviet expansion of the '70s. It made the new Soviet outposts expensive liabilities. The Reagan Doctrine demonstrated -- to the Politburo, ultimately -- that it was the Soviet empire that had overreached...
...well in advance of a national vote. It was his long-awaited White Paper outlining a new "defense posture for the 1970s." While Wilson was in Moscow, Defense Secretary Denis Healey presented that posture to the House of Commons. Object of the plan was to reduce Britain's "overstretch" by trimming the strength of its armed forces abroad by one-third and cutting expenditures by one-sixth to $5.6 billion annually-a figure that would then represent about 6% of Britain's gross national product...