As long as we're talking, we're … talking

Rick Moran, with a wonderful essay on the failings of negotiation in the past 100 years, with contemporary implications. Go read this while I get ready for another day of Dinosaur Jigsaw down at the museum…

Right Wing Nut House » “AS LONG AS WE’RE TALKING, WE’RE NOT SHOOTING AT EACH OTHER”
And yet, even as evidence of Hitler’s use of diplomacy as another kind of warfare piled up before their eyes, both Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier convinced themselves that as long as they were talking, Hitler wouldn’t go to war. This use of negotiations not to solve problems but simply to carry on with the diplomatic niceties – negotiations for the sake of negotiating – led directly to World War II. Thanks to extensive records captured after the war, we know now that Hitler always intended to go to war with France and England and nothing those two nations did would have stopped him. But would the Allies have discovered this if they had not been so in love with the diplomatic process? If, for instance, a more hard eyed approach to dealing with Germany exposed Hitler for the deal breaker that he turned out to be, could France and Britain have been forced to act militarily before Hitler was ready?

This has been bothering me for months as the Israel-Palestinian war erupted and the Iranian/North Korean problems moved center stage.