"Diplomacy, supported by sanctions,"

The above phrase is such a broad statement as to be practically useless as a means of defining somebody's policy framework or political outlook.

Diplomacy can take many forms from aggressive and bullying to opportunistic to conciliatory.

All we can infer from it here is that it represents the vast swathe of non military alternatives, of which there are countless possibilities and variations.

Diplomacy can also be entered into as a long term *high tolerance* process or a short term *low tolerance* process.

Where one politician might be quick to proclaim a breakdown in diplomatic efforts, thus merely paying it lip service and hastening the last resort, another might wish to avoid the last resort until there really was no alternative.

Diplomacy is a word as wide as the sea and as varied in character as a hot sunny day and an icy foggy night.

Both Mali and Antarctica have weather. But weather means quite different things to the folk who use the word in each context.

So they would all use diplomacy.

What does that mean to them?

I would wager that they have quite different ideas about what that means.