In both cases, Putin risks provoking the ire of others and creating more blowback for Russia.

A Muslim girl who wears a headscarf in a public school is simply wearing a headscarf, not provocatively challenging a hegemonic social order.

The scenes of devastation are still vivid in the streets and neighborhoods of Gaza, and Hamas is taking no chances of provoking Israel into a new war.

Economic globalization risked provoking a backlash by provincial populists, while the external enemy the glue that held the neo conservative movement together had disappeared.

It is not going to be an easy balancing act. If the Fund attaches tough German style conditions to its loans, it risks provoking immediate confrontation and default.

Leung has also distinguished himself by inciting a large swathe of school teachers and students to stage massive street protests against his hasty effort to insert a national education program into the school curriculum in order to reconnect Hong Kong s young people with the motherland.

But, with the demise of communism, neo conservatism s two factions once again seemed fated to clash. Economic globalization risked provoking a backlash by provincial populists, while the external enemy the glue that held the neo conservative movement together had disappeared.