A Measure of Respect
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America's Empire Building
America's Empire Building
Extrated Remarks from Colin Powell, US
Secretary of State at the World Economic Forum - January 26TH, 2003
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary of
State, I'm George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm now happily
retired and here at the World Economic Forum. And I thank you very much indeed
for your address and for all that you are personally doing to improve the state
of the world.
Mr. Secretary of State, at this
conference, among the language that has been used has been a phrase, the
difference between hard power and soft power: hard power and military power, and
perhaps expressed in America as the only superpower with a grave responsibility
to create and help to forward the cause of peace in the world; and then soft
power, soft power which binds us all, which has something to do with values,
human values and all the things that you and I passionately believe
in.
Here at WEF, we are thinking of creating a
Council of 100 which includes business leaders, politicians, religious leaders
-- trying to cross all of the boundaries of media and so on. That may be
something that you may wish to give your support to in the days
ahead.
But I've got two questions, if I may. The
first one: Do you feel that in the present situation, and I'm following on my
colleague who just spoke, and regarding Iraq but also Palestine as well, that we
are doing enough in drawing upon the common values expressed by soft power in
uniting what is called West and the Middle East in Islam and Christianity, in
Judaism and other religions?
And would you not
agree, as a very significant political figure in the United States, Colin, that
America, at the present time, is in danger of relying too much upon the hard
power and not enough upon building the trust from which the soft values, which
of course all of our family life that actually at the bottom, when the bottom
line is reached, is what makes human life valuable?
(Applause.)
SECRETARY POWELL: The United States believes strongly in
what you call soft power, the value of democracy, the value of the free economic
system, the value of making sure that each citizen is free and free to pursue
their own God-given ambitions and to use the talents that they were given by
God. And that is what we say to the rest of the world. That is why we
participated in establishing a community of democracy within the Western
Hemisphere. It's why we participate in all of these great international
organizations.
There is nothing in American
experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want
to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do
have hard power -- and here I think you're referring to military power -- then
sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with.
I mean, it was not
soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately
after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in
Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American
GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those
nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.
So our record of living our values and letting our values be
an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to
be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the
world.
(Applause.)
We have gone forth 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 in, and otherwise we
have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to
live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking
with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that
works.
We
have seen these sorts of evil leaders before. We have seen them throughout
history. And they are still alive today. There are still leaders around who will
say, "You do not have the will to prevail over my evil." And I think we are
facing one of those times now.
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