Overrated sometimes, for sure. Diplomacy doesn't always work. But it works often enough for sovereign nations to attempt to further their national interests that it is used more often than not.

The case of North Korea might be a good case-in-point. The Bush administration, knowing that the U.S. had neither the capacity or national will to initiate a major military "solution" for the North Korea problem, encouraged multi-lateral (Japan, South Korea, China and the U.S.) diplomacy to resolve the problem. A treaty was signed by all parties after a couple of years of negotiations. It now looks like North Korea immediately (or maybe continued) actions which violated the newly-minted treaty, almost from the day it was signed. In this case, and in the short run, diplomacy seems to have failed.

But the question remaining is: what now? Clearly, there are a number of countries who desire to stop North Korea from further missile testing and development of nuclear weapons. Will more diplomacy be used? Almost certainly, it will. But now other sanctions will also likely be used. What is unlikely, at least at this point, is any military action to resolve the problem. Any kind of military approach to stopping Kim Jong Il would almost certainly result a massive conflagration involving South Korea and Japan, and if North Korea really does have the ability to launch nuclear missiles, possibly even Alaska and the western U.S. The risk of another major war at this point is a risk that no one is going to take. In fact, the U.S. has neither the money or the military capacity to undertake another major war. Yet the problem still needs to be resolved.

So I might ask, using North Korea as the example--if one believes that diplomacy won't work, then what approach will work?