Sentence:  During the next five years liberal leaders in the United States <WSD>sank</WSD> in the cumulative confusion attendant upon and manifested in a negative policy of Containment - and the bitterest irony - enforced and enforceable only by threat of a weapon that we felt the greatest distaste for but could not abandon : 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  pass into a specified state or condition