While attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked by the former Archbishop of Canterbury if America was relying too much on "hard power" such as military action as opposed to "soft power" such as appealing to the common values of the major religions and building trust based on those values.
Secretary Powell responded by affirming the "soft power" of values but that it was the "hard power" of the military that, for example helped free Europe and the so called "soft power" of peace and reconstruction could take place.
He then said, "We have gone from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them...and otherwise we have returned home...to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where...hard power is the only thing that works."
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