Colin Powell On Foreign Policy: 'We Are Spending Too Much Time Insulting People'

ANN ARBOR (WWJ) - What to do with North Korea? Former U.S. Secretary of State, General Colin Powell was in Ann Arbor Tuesday at the invitation of the University of Michigan and spoke on the topic.

In a directness rarely heard within political party lines -- Powell spoke of one of the challenges of our foreign policy under the Trump administration.

"One of the problems we're having right now in our foreign policy is we are spending too much time insulting people," Powell said to applause.

"If they were to shoot a nuclear weapon which I don't think they will," said Powell, "and hit a city and destroy a neighborhood and 10,000 people - what will that do for them, what strategic advantage? None. And it would be in the certain knowledge that we would attack them the next day, as would probably most of the other nations in the world, one way or another. But I think one thing we might want to do -- is to stop reacting to every thing they do. My own view is that we don't have to jump through a hoop every time they shoot a rocket. It would probably drive them crazy if we paid no attention to one of their firings."

When the subject switched to Vladimir Putin -- despite election interference and the ongoing Mueller investigation -- Powell called the Russian president an "interesting guy" that he believes America can work with.

"You can work with the guy," he said. "But you've got to know who he is and what he is - KGB ... "