Only a complete moron would tell a potential enemy “oh, we’ll never use force, no matter what”. But then, we are talking about about obammy.
Hey NORKS: When the SECDEF is affectionately known as "Mad Dog" and the regime that he replaced had Hussein and Ash calling the shots, you may have missed your window of opportunity.
Absolutely. Often the best use of a strong military is not actually using it, but simply offering the credible threat of using it. Lefties love diplomacy but forget that diplomacy only really works if you have a credible threat of force to back it up. You often don’t actually have to go to war to get what you want, but you can’t expect hostile countries to cooperate if you take military action completely off the table.
Not to mention that in the long term sanctions might not be a completely peaceful response anyway. Sanctions are what got us into WWII; the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because US economic sanctions cut off vital imports needed by Japan to continue their war with China. The Japanese were forced to expand into SE Asia to obtain war materials and believed the US Pacific naval presence was a threat to that expansion. Hence the attack to remove that threat.
In similar fashion, if sanctions become too effective against the Norks, might they not react aggressively to protect their own national interest?