In a perfect world the pen would always be mightier than the sword and intellect would always defeat brute force. But the world is not perfect and more often than mankind can afford brute force has become the dominant influence in history.
Take the era of European imperial power. In the end that colonization was based on brute force and not on any kind of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural superiority. In South and Central America, in Africa, and in Asia, peoples with marvelous ancestral civilizations, equal or superior to European civilizations, were conquered by crude, determined force, a harsher will to power, and a more ruthlessly effective technology.