STRATEGIC STUDIES QUARTERLY
Year:2009 | Volume:12 | Issue:3 (45)|Papers Count:7

Most of the scholars agree that the Modern Society has underwent a fundamental change and different terms, such as postmodern era, post-materialist society and so on has been used for characterizing this development. Abovementioned development, according to German sociologist Ulrich Beck, is not surpassing Modernity but is deepening of it. By coining the term of “risk society”, he tried to demonstrate that in late modern society, we have been facing the ubiquity of risk in every sphere of life and the vast knowledge of people regarding the risks. In that society, threats and risks are not in the form of natural disasters but are originated from the activities of human beings and technological developments. Any change in the threats and risks will be translated into the new policies, because one of the most important functions of politics is combating the threats.

Security studies literature which is used as a base in reviewing other countries security developments, has roots in the Western countries and especially US security developments due to its origin and nature. This literature is mostly Western (West-Based) because even if it has not been created in western geographical district by Western scholars in Western language (Latin), its main object has been to provide western inserts. This article attempts to remind the necessity of Western security studies literature revision considering its explanatory limits. Therefore, at first the nature of western security studies literature is checked, then its emergence, proliferation, and explanatory limits will be discussed. At the end, the necessity of theoretical and practical revision of the existing security studies literature is considered.

Industrial and technological activities of the last two centuries have highly overused ecologies available in our biosphere in a way that their continuity and stability will endanger our life and civilization. After the collapse of the Cold War geopolitical structure, environmental destructions and hazards caused social and political activists to react. Ecology has had a great effect on the security and policy literature due to its humane – environmental nature. As we know, ecology has different dimensions among which political ecology has helped researchers and political activists to reflect environmental destructions.

The subject – matter of soft power nowadays attracts attention of many countries, of researchers in IR and security studies and of practitioners to it. It yields for discussing security from soft dimension of it. Because it doesn’t subordinate to power and its focus on internationally perspective here is mentioning the security as an independently concept and externally/internally one. Soft security would be different, identify with and supplement of hard one in philological apprising, it does epistemologically definite in four paths in reducing appeal to use of force and removing pretext economic instrument for sanctions and punishments, being well situated for legitimating hard security and being attractive and the last section from the ontologically it comprises dimensions and spheres.

There are various ways and tools for providing security which are affected by three types of power: military, economic, and attraction. Soft security is a kind of security that can be created through attraction power in the society. The basic research question is that which factors have been effective in the emergence of this tendency among governments. To answer this question, the concepts of power, soft and hard security, and intellectual principles of soft security are briefly described here. In the next sections, factors affecting soft security in international and domestic levels are expressed. Among these factors, undermining the realism paradigm in politics, security concept transformation and its developing domain, globalization and its consequences on security, development of democratic values and systems in the world, development of new social movements, characteristics and advantages of soft security, expectation revolution and accountable governments, and the fundamental characteristics of Islamic Republic of Iran that is more compatible with soft security than hard security or hard power, are more prominent.

Soft discourse was introduced in the final decade of the twentieth century and new horizons were born in understanding and explaining the strategic issues, particularly in International Studies. The concept of soft security has risen from the heart of this discourse and refers to a kind of security that protects the actors against such harms and risks in an intangible way. Present article mentions different ways for soft security concept to become operational in Iranian society and looks for a strategy that can protect the society and government against each other's threats in a soft way in Islamic Republic framework. So, the author believes that what can help this important strategy to operate at internal security level and prefers soft security to hard security to maintain the Islamic Republic is the reproduction of Islamic Republic discourse to face different challenges and environmental crisis in discourse fields, abstract fields and social practice domain.

The main question of this article is about the soft threat Components. Author has tried to review the literature related to the topic or focus on three regions: North-West Russia, the European Union and African countries to describe soft threat components. The comparative study of these areas shows three essential features for soft threat and security: First, it focuses on topics that earlier were discussed only in sociology, urban management, and service society. Second, it intends to identify, strengthen and use social capital and finally, it tries to resolve actual or mental concerns of society. More subtle point is that although we speak of the society's soft security, the ultimate beneficiary is the government that will try to organize national relations and exchanges after providing social order.