“Battle: "[A battle is] a method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue."

— Ambrose Bierce

Battlefied results, diplomacy and: "Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield."

— Walter Bedell Smith, 1954

Blockade: The use by a state or coalition of military force to prevent imports or exports from the territory of another state or coalition, a measure just short of war that leaves the actual initiation of hostilities to the decision of those being blockaded.

Bluffing: Avoid deadlines and ultimata unless you mean them. Otherwise, the other side may use them against you.

Blunders, bureaucratic: "In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when there is a quarrel between two states, it is generaly occasioned by some blunder of a ministry."

— Benjamin Disraeli, 1858

Blunders, diplomatic: "Our diplomats plunge us forever into misfortune; our generals always save us."

— Otto von Bismarck, c. 1850”