The Enemy's Soft War Devices With an Emphasis on Virtual Media

In recent years, some new concepts have found their way into political literature due to the dramatic developments in information technology. One of such concepts is ‘soft war’ which denotes some kind of peaceful change or non-violent overthrow, which was not seen in the past centuries. Soft war is the wide-ranging assault of the enemy on cultural, political, economic, social and political fields and its outcome is the transformation of the political system and substitution of new identities. In soft war, using suitable devices which are presently the media, the invader imposes his will on a nation and gets different aspects of the country under his control by means of software methods. In this way, the invader assaults a nation’s beliefs and willpower and fulfills his objectives without making use of coercion and occupation. Hence, domination and invasion in soft war is wide-ranging since it influences the thoughts, beliefs and behaviors of the target nation. The main question tackled in this paper is: ‘What is the role of the media in soft war?’. Our initial hypothesis is that, at present, soft war cannot succeed without the media.