| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 政治學系 === 94 === Soft power is an invisible power of a nation. It can shape other countries’ preferences by its culture, ideology, system, political ideas, values, and the legitimacy of government’s policies. This thesis will start from the origin of the concept of American soft power; then to explain the ways that how US implements its soft power. In order to verify whether American soft power is exist or not, this thesis took the two Gulf Wars for case studies. US gained plenty international supports as a result of President Bush and Secretary of the State Baker’s diplomatic efforts during the Gulf crisis in 1991. There were up to 40 countries joined the allied forces and eventually expelled Iraqi army from Kuwait. On the contrary, during the Gulf crisis in 2003, US not only could not pass the resolution in the UN Security Council, but also caused the
serious conflicts inside the Trans-Atlantic Alliance due to lack of legitimacy.
Afterwards this thesis compared the differences between the two wars. We found that the most important difference between the two Gulf Wars was the legitimacy that was authorized by the UN Security Council’s resolution. Moreover, according to our research result, no matter how strong the American soft power is, it depends on its hard power after all. After the Gulf War (2003), President Bush has been facing the decision-making of using hard or soft power. And this will lead a great
impact on US as well as the whole world.
Key words: soft power, hard power, Gulf war（1991）、Gulf War（2003）、Bush Doctrine.
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