Italy and their new coach, Conor O'Shea, conversely, have something tangible to build upon and in Carlo Canna an increasingly reassuring presence around whom to build.
Even his harshest critics began to concede that this particular leopard had changed its spots.Mr Kukes and Mr Khodorkovsky, in short, represented everything that foreigners found increasingly reassuring about Russia.
The biggest issue for the United States is how to counterbalance an increasingly assertive China — and reassure its increasingly nervous neighbors — while trying to cajole and goad Beijing into being a more responsible world player.
After World War II, privilege signs reassured an increasingly mobile public that the familiar comforts of home — a Coke, a 7-Up, a Pepsi — would be available in whatever strange city one happened to land.
All the same, it has become increasingly vital to reassure the Sunnis both that their provinces will get a fair share of future oil revenues and that a Shia "super-region" will not emerge in the south and so break Iraq up.
For example, as the owners of major textile mills in Lowell and Lawrence, Mass., established cordial relations with Southern planters, it became increasingly necessary to reassure slaveholders that abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison represented a lunatic fringe, and that Northerners generally agreed that the Constitution prevented any interference with slavery.
Over the following months Williams suffered from panic attacks and memory loss, struggling to remember lines during the shooting of Night at the Museum 3. His mental state declined, and Schneider Williams found herself increasingly unable to reassure his anxieties and insecurities.
Washington and other NATO powers must also find a way to reassure increasingly flustered Eastern European states - particularly the former Soviet Baltics - that their defence guarantees will be honoured, without escalating tensions.
This is a familiar dialogue between those worrying about a near future of increasingly scarce resources and others reassured by an emergent future of exponentially abundant capacity.
