Publicly approved wars : How soft power is used to sway public opinion

Sammanfattning: The United States has always been a very prominent user of hard power and has in most of its existence wielded a great amount of it, seen by their long military history. Another power the United States has a vast amount of is soft power, begging the question how this power has been utilized in the past, to for example create public support for military intervention. As soft powers impact on global security is immense, seen by the Ukraine-Russia war, recognizing how it has been used to justify military intervention in the past, and how it is used now. The importance of this effect and study is tremendous as it displays how a country can justify wars and influence public opinion and could possibly be used to identify a country in the process of trying to replicate the effect. The thesis proposes that there exist 2 effects known as culturally moulding and culturally swaying, which when used properly can affect the public opinion to a certain extent, which likely has been used to influence public opinion in the U.S on the 2 military interventions discussed. This subject falls in the line of security and power studies, wherein the main concept will be Joseph S. Nye’s concept of hard, soft and smart power, and it will be a qualitative study. The study will examine public opinion on military interventions and view them from a soft power perspective and consider why specifically these interventions were seen as justified. The delimitations to this study will be to keep the study to America, though there are plenty of other examples, and keep the case study to 2 military interventions, Afghanistan and Taiwan.