Hard power and soft at the beginning of the 21st century

This bachelor thesis analyses the concept of power. It speaks about historical concepts of power and ways of defining and understanding across humanities. Special attention is devoted to the application of power in international relations. According to recent history at the turn-of-the-century, the main part of this thesis is based on the concept of American political scientist J. S. Nye, Jr., who distinguishes three kinds of power -- hard power, soft power and smart power. Afterwards, this concept is applied on the foreign policy of the United States of America with special consideration on the presidential administration of G. W. Bush and Barack Obama. The main purpose and aim of this thesis is to analyze the results of using different kinds of power and generalize the main findings for its application in international affairs at the beginning of the 21st century