It was nice. i don't think we'll ever, in our lifetime, feel peaceful enough to allow resources to flow in that direction. we're in the opening acts of the "now is the times of monsters" era, and god knows how long that will last. soft power works when you trust the one conveying it.
the only soft power left, i feel, is the one that's small enough to move unseen - sending 100 firemen over the border to help your direct neighbor that has problems with a forest fire. the age of the grand, operatic endeavors, encompassing the globe, is over. it only lasted for about 60 years. it died at 9/11.
if hitler built a school in hungary in 1939, was it soft power, or was it an imperial gift? this is the dilemma now - What opens its arms to me? is it goodwill, or is it calculation? do i care if that What holds moral rectitude as a value, or am i too hungry to say no? it's who you choose, between the monk or the warchief.
intellectually, there's an inertia tucked away under the whole idea - surely we must be good. and since we're powerful, our goodness is implicit.
this is the point on the power self-actualization map where you start seeing "here there be monsters". i suspect, for a while, as a lot of good ideas, it will be relegated to the "debate" rooms. it might come back but i don't think i'll see it, meaningfully, again.
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