Even the conservative Commissioner Chris Patten, very appreciated by the US, had been very critical towards Bush's Axis of Evil. He qualified that vision as absolutist and simplistic and declared he couldn't believe it was a deeply thought political statement. The problem is that this policy will end up detroying years of effort to get Iran and North Korea from a dangerous isolation. That's simplicism difficulty: it's not only to believe in it but also to make believe it.
South Korea is also trying to establish durable and strong links with North Koera. Just like with East-Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall, there are numerous families that are split between those 2 countries. In Iran, there is a youth that's fed up with their government; it wants to adopt our western culture, to modernize itself. Besides, just like Communism as a government rule started in Russia and also ended in Russia, taking all the other countries with it in Glasnost and Perestroika, Islamic Fundamentalism started in Iran and therefore must first end there to weaken their influence in the other countries.
All those hopes were wiped out in a few words at the State of the Union speech.

Europeans have had colonies and wars and have learned a lot from them. First, when we are dealing with locals, its mainly with those who have the power, money, communication and who want us there to help them; but this was far too often at the expense of the rest of the population which resented us. If we only establish communication with a fraction of the population, we will run into trouble and one by one, Europeans left their colonies. However, the problem remains as the former colonies have failed to adopt democracy.
We've had two world wars and we didn't learn anything from them?
Well there is NATO for one thing, then there's the European Union.
It's because Germany got isolated (through the Versailles Treaty) that it developed its xenophobia, nationalism and antisemitism and that hatred developed into war and millions of deaths. The European Union knows it cannot isolate countries, for fear of extremely dangerous reactions. When a culture, a religion or a country is ostracized (by using particular words in a an official speech, for instance), they are being provoked, humiliated, undermined and the step , by individuals, to join an army of soldiers ready to commit their lives is much easier to take.
Diplomats and heads of states must be very careful with the choice of words (even Japan learned it when Bush said devaluation instead of deflation) . We are all humans on the same planet and if there are wars, it's because somewhere, sometime, there was a misunderstanding and a misunderstanding that could have been corrected as , in the end, peace comes back anyway.
The bottomline is: don't humilate, don't isolate, talk and show the other side you care.
If it doesn't work, it's because the misunderstanding is too deep and dates back years in the past. Then, of course, armies are the solution.
BTW, why do you mix arrogance with criticism? For both Tom and you, it seems this word doesn't exist; one uses attacks the other arrogance...and I'm the only European, here, who's got to take the blow. Words are worth a lot!

Raoul