If one were to suggest that declarations of war were a thing of the past, supporters of my Soft War notion might be inclined to disagree by referring to the statement made by the Former President of China Hu Jintao, who in 2007 oversaw the first usage of the phrase soft power in official Chinese policy. With this in mind, my paper will hereby argue that until China’s culture, lifestyle and political system can be better understood and appreciated at an international level, it will fail to become the great soft power that it so desires. As such, with international conflict currently plateauing at historically low levels, one of the most effective weapons that a given state has to increase its global power and relevance is that of its soft power.

Soft power, in its most basic sense, is a given nation’s ability to attract and influence others at an international level and can often be found within the likes of a country’s language, way of life or even something as trivial as its film industry.

We have heard of The Great War, we have heard of The Cold War, but is it about time that someone coined the phrase: The Soft War? An oxymoronic attention-grabber at least, the word soft in this instance is of course referring to the notion of a nation’s soft power.