When two NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, were on the cusp of war in 1974, the United States secretly removed all of NATO's nuclear weapons from Greece and cut the arming wires of every nuclear weapon stored in Turkey, rendering them inoperable.
One moment the East was on the cusp of war, the next things were better than ever.
By entering their nation onto the cusp of war mere days before two vital regime events, Pyongyang could explain to the population the reason for the current food shortages and lack of economic fortitude.
Supporters of each candidate continued to clash, though, as the country teetered on the cusp of civil war.
It's that awful thing, which we touched on in South Riding, where no one knows they're on the cusp of another war.
By 1958, on the cusp of civil war over Algeria, the Fourth Republic was ready to collapse, and it did — right into the hands of Le Grand Charles. "Great circumstances bring forth great men," he declared.
"Downton Abbey," which follows an aristocratic English family and its nosy staff at a sprawling estate on the cusp of World War I, was first shown on ITV in Britain.
By setting the opera at the time of its creation, Carsen shows Vienna not as a nostalgic playground but as a teeming metropolis on the cusp of modernity, war and the end of empire.
The manuscript, "Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem," was discovered in a previously untouched university archive and offers an unusual window on the ideas and events (like Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia) that animated Harlem on the cusp of World War II.
If Hariri's killing is any indication, it may be years before the perpetrators in Friday's attack are known — and it may not matter to a city that perpetually totters on the cusp of sectarian war, and where all news, it seems, is bad news.
Despite Mr. Haneke's avowed determination to leave viewers free to interpret, associations between the crimes committed in the movie on the cusp of World War I and the far greater crimes of 1933 to 1945 seem inescapable from the first moments of "The White Ribbon," when the film's voice-over narrator proposes that his story might "clarify some things that happened later in our country".
