Question:medium

Fill in the blanks with the words that best fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
If a nation is unable to come to on interpreting its own past, it will be unable to its national interests.

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Look for the pair where both words form natural collocations with "on its past" and "national interests."
Updated On: Jul 21, 2026
  • conclusion ... plan
  • terms ... design
  • decision ... comprehend
  • consensus ... formulate
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The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

Test each pair by asking whether the two blanks together tell one connected story: disagreement over history leading to a specific kind of failure in defining interests.

  1. conclusion ... plan breaks the story because reaching a conclusion about history does not logically prevent a nation from planning, which is a forward looking, separate activity.
  2. terms ... design also breaks down, since coming to terms is about accepting a situation, while designing interests implies building something concrete, a mismatch in scale.
  3. decision ... comprehend fails the logic test too, because a decision on history should not stop a nation from comprehending, which is simply understanding, not creating, its interests.
  4. consensus ... formulate keeps the story connected throughout: without shared agreement on the past, a nation cannot build or state its interests clearly, and formulate means exactly that active process of shaping them.

consensus ... formulate is the pair that keeps the sentence's cause and effect logically consistent.

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