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Originally Posted by daswig
Kennedy backed his diplomacy up with "the big stick". There's no way Kruschev would have backed down if he didn't think Kennedy was willing to start WWIII right there, right then over the issue at hand.
Old Neville showed the futility of appeasement. Appeasement is the concept of feeding your friends to the tiger, in the hopes that he'll eat you last. And Pakistan and India didn't have a long-term peaceful relationship until they both developed nukes...they'd been spasmodically whacking each other for decades.
For diplomacy to be effective, your side has to have the ability to assrape the other country in a figurative sense. Otherwise, you're simply begging.
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Daswig, you didn't read what i said. I said Kennedy blended shows of will with diplomacy. I said India and Pakistan had had both peace and war before and after nukes.
Sob, Godwins's Law is the idea that the productive discussion is over when someone mentions Hitler. i'm not always an adherant to the idea, but i don't think your example served the debate.
My point is not that diplomacy will always solve problems. It will fail, from time to time. It's the worst option, except for all the other ones...to steal a phrase from Churchill. But to hold up Neville and to say that diplomacy is inheriently bad, weak, ineffective is so logically fallacious and morally dubious...
And so i say to the people insistant on talking about Hitler...you've won yourselves a shiny new Godwin's award.