Governments regularly campaign to influence the selection of top United Nations officials, using whatever diplomatic muscle they have.

American lives would be at risk in a protracted entanglement where American policy never came into play and American diplomatic muscle was never applied.

China has the diplomatic muscle to resist trade and currency concessions that might undermine its competitive edge.

And these programs rarely enjoy the kind of diplomatic muscle that might force autocratic leaders to agree to political liberalization.

Assassinations had been a rare but real alternative to more complex exercises of diplomatic muscle.

Washington, after establishing relations with Hanoi, should exert its diplomatic muscle as an intermediary between China and Vietnam.

It will take a concerted international show of diplomatic and economic muscle.

Certainly the U.S. should ask the U.N. to condemn the invasion and send in observers, but more diplomatic muscle is needed.

I think that Member States now have a moral obligation to flex the full extent of their diplomatic and political muscle with Israel to end this violence.

This is a serious shortcoming that particularly affects smaller Member States, who lack the diplomatic muscle of the larger nations.