On hard-nosed diplomacy.

This snippet (TODAY, Sept 17) sheds further light on the diplomacy of a small state, Singapore:

The speaker, who was the Foreign Ministry's former Permanent Secretary, provides us with an insider's perspective:

 

I suppose Mr Lee Kuan Yew could be described as a hard-nosed Realist. ST also used this label to describe the new Australian foreign minister:

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Moving on, to language matters, how did the term "hard-nosed" originate? The dictionaries were happy to give their definitions but were coy on the origin of hard-nosed (why not "hard-teeth"? someone asked). I did find this speculative explanation -- from the sports section of an American online news site:

Tracing the origin of the phrase "hard-nosed" with dogs, rhinos, bullets and surgeons

http://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/index.ssf/2013/08/tracing_back_the_origin_of_har.html

Then there is this tongue-in-cheek explanation from Yahoo! Answers (UK)...

I believe it originated with Michelangelo, in despair at his wonderful statue of David. Took a bit of re-sculpting, it did. The phrase in Italian is quite musical.