re: The Cold War
Wasn't there deterence during the cold war?
That's a good example of soft power.
Now, in Europe, the variety of cultures, opinions and countries, while they all seek to get along for the purpose of creating a large market, also neutralize each other if one head of state did something the others would strongly disagree with.
There is no question there are dangerous places in the world but sometimes they can be made even more dangerous if we interefered.
And there is no question new threats require different ways of dealing with them.
Raoul