Of the lessons
Ambassador Pickering believes the US should take from the last decade into the next, foremost appeared the warning that military force is not a
good substitute for diplomacy and, moreover, carries so many unintended consequences that it
remains an unadvisable policy tool except in the most dire of circumstances — namely, in the face of direct aggression, in order to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or in order to put an end to genocide.