adventurism

From adventure +‎ -ism.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ədˈvɛn(t)ʃəɹɪz(ə)m/

adventurism (countable and uncountable, plural adventurisms)

1. The behaviour of an adventurer; risk-taking. [from 19th c.]
   • 1969, Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint, New York: Vintage, 1994, p. 161,

     […] she really hadn’t wanted me to think of her as given over wholly to sexual excess and adventurism […]

   • 1980, Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism” in Under the Sign of Saturn, New York: Vintage, 1981, pp. 101-102,

     In pornographic literature, films, and gadgetry throughout the world […] the SS has become a referent of sexual adventurism.

2. (politics) The taking of excessive risks by a government in their political, economic or foreign affairs. [from 20th c.]
   • 1993, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom, Nairobi: EAEP, Part I, Chapter 2, p. 22,

     Even where they were aware of the devastating effects of imperialism on the subject peoples, as in Conrad’s description of the dying victims of colonial adventurism in Heart of Darkness, they could not free themselves from the Eurocentric basis of their vision.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 133:

     The rejection of foreign adventurism derived partly from an awareness of the dynastic vulnerability of the Bourbon line, partly from the country's economic as well as its military fragility – and partly too from the increasingly evident limitations of France's traditional international allies.