The intervention of the former US president, metropolitan Westminster types such as David Cameron and a lobby of Irish-Americans in the policing and justice debate over recent days will be perceived by many in the unionist community as a bullying pincer movement.
Sometimes, the threats come like pincer movements with all angles covered.
He warned that Scotland was now in danger of being caught in "a classic pincer movement" between "a Tory party that wants to cut Scotland out of the UK budget and the SNP that wants to cut Scotland out of UK taxes", referring to the SNP's flagship policy of full fiscal autonomy, which would see Scotland having complete control over it own taxation and spending.
The SPD is now "two parties under one roof", says Jürgen Falter, a political scientist at Mainz University.The party is also trapped in a political pincer.
A DUCK'S bill, rodent legs, a crustacean pincer, rusting scrap metal, strings of small coloured beads, bird feathers, threads of plant seeds, a tiny terracotta pot, dangling cowrie shells, all bound tightly together on a plump female effigy carved in wood.
Less extreme Sunni rebels pushed out IS in the north-western provinces of Idleb and Aleppo early this year, but have since fallen back and are now caught in a pincer between IS and pro-Assad forces.
They fear being caught between "the two prongs of a pincer", according to the Indian Steel Alliance, an industry group.Commodity traders, such as the ones reclining in the Coronation Building, fear they may be next in line.
Essentially they are caught in a pincer movement.
Syrian jitters at this pincer movement grew when Jordan began sitting in on talks between the two.
Ethiopian and Kenyan forces, with logistical backing from the Americans, French and British, have squeezed it in a pincer movement from the west and south.
Hundreds of police swept up Regent Street and the two sides of Oxford Street in a pincer movement, herding anyone in their way into a tight pocket of drenched, cold, hungry humanity.
