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This is not an either/or decision. You need to simultaneously prepare for war while pushing diplomacy as far you can take it. The carrot does not work without

This is not an either/or decision. You need to simultaneously prepare for war while pushing diplomacy as far you can take it. The carrot does not work without the stick and the stick shouldn't be used without trying the carrot first. Sadly, diplomacy can only go so far, and some actors will require being neutralized to solve to problem (see Hitler). I think the classic example of this is the UK in World War II. They honestly did everything they could to prevent WWII with Hitler including making concessions they probably shouldn't have in the diplomacy phase before resigning themselves that they would have to kill him to solve the problem.

ncmncm 7y ago
Hitler had strong support at top levels in the UK government, as in the US government. They did not consider him a problem, but a solution. It took a long time for enough of those people to be overcome before anything concrete could be done, and by then the fire was raging. We are in the same condition today, vis-a-vis worldwide fascism, with (e.g.) an advocate in the US White House, aligned with counterparts in, e.g., Russia, India, Brazil, Philippines, Hungary, Turkey, and Israel.