Great Power's Conflicting Approaches to Soft War in Their Strategic Action

Iran’s political developments in 1388، paved the ground for the development of strategic and security literature. It was in this way that issues such as soft threat، soft power، and soft war came to be considered. Generally speaking، the facts of international policy from the ancient times indicate that there had also existed features of «soft war» in parallel with local، national، and regional conflicts fought with war instruments. In this regard، Sun Tzu counts as the first theorist who presented his ideas 400 before Christ. This indicates that although strategic literature has been enhanced، its intellectual infrastructures and thoughts have remained constant to a great extent. The conflicting strategies to soft warfare indicate that this approach will have various and different behavior patterns. Every executive agent makes use of a specific paradigm. Of the ancient theorists who have presentedarguments about soft war، a reference can be made to Sun Tzu، Jomini، Clausewitz، and Liddell hart. It was many years before Christ to «the age of classic strategy» that they managed to present their approaches about various political، psychological، social، and strategic issues. In the modern age، one can refer to the approaches and literature presented by the modern strategists who developed the issue of soft war in the form of social processes، capturing minds، organizing the ideas، surprising andultimately the soft threats. Among these scholars are Joseph Nye، Campbel، Cooper، and Richard Hass. The above mentioned theorists considered a specific behavior pattern in strategic conflicts. Whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran is subject to soft war، so it is necessary to consider the operationaland executive reflections of such approaches. Each of the conflicting approaches to soft war constitutes part of the reality of strategic behavior. In this regard، the literature of soft war can be consideredon the basis of the models of strategic thought in the modern age. Such concepts can be known to be the intellectual infrastructure of political subversion. Soft war reflects some features of the conflict and influencing the political power through non-military means. This article rethinks the reflection of the different approaches of strategic thinking in soft war، and its effects in the processes of the actors” security competition. It is understandable that the most important object of this article is for the effects of conflicting approaches to soft war on the security of the Islamic Revolution of Iran to be examined. It follows that “the comparative approach in explaining soft war” can be considered as the “theoretical framework” of the present article.