Sentence:  Meanwhile , in Moscow , Khrushchev was adding his bit to the march of world law by <WSD>promising</WSD> to build a bomb with a wallop equal to 100 million tons of TNT , to knock sense into the heads of those backward oafs who can n't see the justice of surrendering West Berlin to communism . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  make a promise or commitment