Definition

Belligerent means hostile, aggressive, and ready to fight or argue. It refers to someone who is actively engaged in a conflict or contentious situation.

Pronunciation

US English

UK English


See Synonyms, Antonyms and Usage

Excerpts from News Articles

1

But North Korea is as belligerent as ever, and China is now viewed in the South as part of the problem, propping up its Communist neighbor while doing little to prevent its acquisition of missile and nuclear technology. In 2016, in the name of countering the North Korean threat, South Korea agreed to let the United States deploy a missile-defense system on its soil. China reacted with rage, its government-run media calling for boycotts of South Korean products.

Logo 2023-04-10 The New York Times

2

Countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain have also backed strong EU engagement with China, even as Washington takes a harder line with what it sees as an increasingly belligerent Beijing.

Logo 2023-04-11 Reuters

3

Should the obstinate and increasingly belligerent Putin attend the meeting, South Africa must respect its obligations to the ICC and arrest him, even though Russia is a longstanding ANC ally.

Logo 2023-04-03 Al Jazeera

4

For hundreds of years, British culture stereotyped the “native” Irish as savage, bestial, childlike, lazy, belligerent and, above all else, unruly: a tribe that needed British civilization – and, therefore, its colonization. Irish nationalists like poet W.B. Yeats, who wanted to free the whole of Ireland from British rule, felt they had to flip this script by purging the island of “Anglo” influences, reviving the Irish language and promoting Celtic arts.

Logo 2023-04-05 The Conversation

5

Whether war happens will now boil down to whether bickering between Israeli political parties and individual officials will cause Tel Aviv to adopt a belligerent approach and push forward with gas production in the disputed fields before an agreement is reached. If it does, there can be little doubt that Hezbollah will open fire if its red line is crossed. Israel’s stake in the matter is additional energy revenues, while for Lebanon it is potentially a matter of life or death. Neither side wants war, but one has much to gain and the other has everything to lose.

Logo 2023-04-10 RT News

6

And Trump called New York Attorney General Letitia James, the first Black woman to hold that title, a "racist in reverse" as he blasted the {$}250 million civil fraud lawsuit that James filed against him, several of his adult children, and the Trump Organization. Trump's belligerent remarks about his legal foes — meant to demean them and raise questions about their motivations — also underscored the scope of the peril he potentially faces in multiple courtrooms. Those cases and investigations show no signs of slowing down.

Logo 2023-04-05 CNBC

7

I’m unsurprised by recent reports of antisocial audience behaviour at theatres and performance venues. Anyone who’s been out in central London couldn’t fail to notice the simmering rage, selfishness and belligerence that increasingly spills out these days.

Logo 2023-04-15 The Guardian

8

Find a respected mediator. Start unofficial talks long before the belligerents are prepared to meet publicly. Include more women and civil-society groups in the peace process.

Logo 2023-04-17 The Economist

9

The two sets of exercises could trigger a belligerent response from Pyongyang, which views the US’s military drills with its Asian allies as invasion rehearsals. North Korea has used such drills as a pretext to accelerate its own weapons development, creating a tit-for-tat cycle that has raised tensions in recent months.

Logo 2023-04-17 Al Jazeera

10

The foreign ministers from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and the European Union are expected to focus on worries over Russia's war in Ukraine, China's increasingly belligerent rise and North Korea's provocative string of weapons' tests.

Logo 2023-04-15 CNBC

11

This could result in a push to alter Japan’s constitution to allow a more belligerent defence policy and further delay reforms to gender equality, which would go against the majority of public opinion.


12

The French president has made bold statements about Western Europe asserting its independence from Washington’s belligerent foreign policy

Logo 2023-04-15 RT News

13

The foreign ministers from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and the European Union are expected to focus on worries over Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s increasingly belligerent rise and North Korea’s provocative string of weapons’ tests.

Logo 2023-04-15 Politico

14

Reducing your economic efficiency is a foolish thing to do at the best of times, because it condemns our children to a lower standard of living than we have enjoyed. It is suicidal at a time when an increasingly belligerent China is rediscovering the virtues of meritocracy, but this time by producing scientists and technologists, not Confucian scholars.

Logo 2023-04-12 The Spectator

15

So, too, are there increasing efforts in Taiwan to understand the nature of America’s commitment to it and the extent to which military and other support might extend – particularly if China chooses to become more belligerent toward Taiwan in the future.

Logo 2023-04-20 CNN News

16

One thing that a lot of autocrats do to prevent armed factions of the state from launching coups is to coup-proof, which means creating rival centers of power by creating an internal security apparatus. Sudan has a conventional army, the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, which is one of the belligerents now. Back in the early two-thousands, around the war in Darfur, Bashir decided to rely on janjaweed or Arab militias to engage in scorched-earth tactics and genocide.

Logo 2023-04-20 The New Yorker

17

The greatest disservice that could be done to the Sudanese people, to the integrity of Sudan as a sovereign state, to the security of Sudan’s neighbors, and indeed to international peace and security, would be to allow negotiations between the belligerents to yield yet another internationally endorsed compromise predicated on power-sharing. At least now it should be clear that Burhan and Hemedti are not reformers — and that they will never be reformed.

Logo 2023-04-18 The Washington Post

18

The official, engaged in work pertaining to the security role of the Foreign Office, was, unlike Raab, not a karate black belt, or an Oxford boxing blue. But he had been in difficult circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and was not fazed by displays of petulant belligerence – though he accepted that some colleagues may have been upset by aspects of the foreign secretary’s behaviour.

Logo 2023-04-21 The Independent

19

It's true that Mrs. Davis delights in lots of big swings and even bigger ideas, including but not limited to rogue stage magicians; a fake Pope; a resistance movement made up entirely of muscular, sweet-natured himbos; bronco busting; a Middle-Ages-themed endurance competition, a high-tech heist, some light blasphemy, the occasional exploding head, a particularly belligerent whale and a quest for the Holy Grail.

Logo 2023-04-18 NPR

20

If China is willing to play a guarantor and sustain a neutral position, it will bring a significant change to geopolitics in the world. In contrast, the US has in the past two decades increasingly taken sides and become belligerent in many conflicts, often becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.

Logo 2023-04-21 China Daily

21

Some of the attacks are likely funded by Iran’s enemies, too. In April 2021, for example, Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a controversial, belligerent Iranian opposition group based in Albania. And during the Trump administration, the U.

Logo 2023-04-22 Politico

22

A speech by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on April 20 asserting that the U.S had no desire to "decouple" from China since that would be "disastrous for both countries" and "destabilizing for the rest of the world" indicated that the U.S. President Joe Biden's administration might be seriously interested in reestablishing a relationship with China which has become seriously "frayed" by a belligerent U.S.

Logo 2023-04-22 CGTN

23

“We remind both belligerents of their obligations under international humanitarian law, including obligations related to the protection of civilians,” Blinken said.

Logo 2023-04-22 CNN News

24

“This tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It’s unconscionable and it must stop,” he said. “The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan.”

Logo 2023-04-23 The Independent

25

“The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan,” Biden said.

Logo 2023-04-23 Politico

26

"The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan," Biden said in a statement.

Logo 2023-04-23 Reuters

27

“This tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It’s unconscionable and it must stop,” Biden said. “The belligerent parties must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access, and respect the will of the people of Sudan.”

Logo 2023-04-23 Politico

28

“The greatest disservice that could be done to the Sudanese people, to the integrity of Sudan as a sovereign state, to the security of Sudan’s neighbors, and indeed to international peace and security, would be to allow negotiations between the belligerents to yield yet another internationally endorsed compromise predicated on power-sharing.”

Logo 2023-04-23 The Washington Post

29

The former US president described himself as the “only candidate” who could promise to prevent the US from getting involved in World War III. If “these incompetent people” remain in office, however, there “will be a war like no other” with belligerent parties using nuclear weapons, Trump warned.

Logo 2023-04-23 RT News

30

It would be imprudent to assume that this belligerence is just theatre, and dangerously wishful to trust that China can easily be deterred from striking at its most valued object. Yet this is precisely what some optimistic observers do. They claim the world’s democracies can readily deter China, by brandishing threats of economic coercion and military intervention, with Ukraine as a precedent.

Logo 2023-04-23 The Spectator

31

In Watson’s 1968 book The Double Helix he frequently disparages Franklin, making negative comments about her appearance, her feminist principles and her emotions. In one passage Watson writes: “Given her belligerent moods, it would be difficult for Maurice Wilkins to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA.”

Logo 2023-04-25 The Conversation

32

And, in a lesson for today’s political leaders, interest in maintaining economic pressure on Russia and its war machine evaporated quickly, with key members of the bloc doubling down on economic engagement with its belligerent neighbor, perpetuating a misconstrued notion of Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade,” instead.

Logo 2023-04-27 Politico

33

The leaked intelligence findings, which have not been previously disclosed, also offer new insights on the obstacles Biden faces in securing global support for his efforts to reject the spread of authoritarianism, contain Russia’s belligerence beyond its borders and counter China’s growing global reach — as influential regional powers try to remain on the sidelines.

Logo 2023-04-29 The Washington Post

34

Upon arriving in Hungary on Friday, Francis urged Europe to find again its founding values of peaceful unity as he denounced the “adolescent belligerence ” of Russia’s war in neighbouring Ukraine.

Logo 2023-04-29 Al Jazeera

35

In his opening remarks, Tacopina was belligerent and insulting. He called Carroll a liar out to make money. He repeated Trump’s denial that he had raped Carroll. He called her suit “an assault on justice.” He said he would call no witnesses of his own. He was coarse, obnoxious and disrespectful — a perfect mouthpiece for his client.

Logo 2023-04-30 The Washington Post