Software War: from Threat to Response

At times, some concepts and terms denote paradigmatic changes. Concepts like soft war and soft threat are among such notions. They don’t merely signify the appearance of new ways of fighting or the emergent political and security developments. Rather, they herald the emergence of a new paradigm in the arena of international conflicts and competitions. There is no doubt that understanding the basic concepts of the dominant paradigm in the contemporary social-political changes in the world is a necessary prerequisite for strategic policy formulations in the field of the internal and external developments of each political unit. With this assumption and considering the current semantic confusion and theoretical perplexity in this area, the present paper attempts to offer definitions and theoretical models to clarify the boundaries of the afore-mentioned concepts benefiting from the scientific literature and the conclusions drawn from the relevant events.