Definition of "statecraft" [state•craft]

• The art of leading a country: "They placed free access to scientific knowledge far above the exigencies of statecraft” ( Anthony Burgess). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A realistic plan to prevent them from occurring is what people with experience in statecraft call 'strategy,' something Senator Obama has not offered yet."
• "A realistic plan to prevent [these "dangers"] from occurring is what people with experience in statecraft call 'strategy,' something Senator Obama has not offered yet."
• "He has three main sets of conclusions: that Elizabeth learned important lessons of statecraft from the bitter failures of her sister Mary's reign, that her attitude to religion was a sincere adherence to what evolved into High Church Anglicanism, and that her attitudes to both marriage and religion were perhaps crucially formed during her residence with her father's last wife and her second husband, Thomas Seymour."