Governments use military power to issue threats, fight, and with a combination of skill and luck, achieve desired outcomes within a reasonable time. Economic power is often a similarly straightforward matter. Governments freeze foreign bank accounts overnight, and can distribute bribes or aid promptly, (although economic sanctions often take a long time, if ever, to produce desired outcomes). Soft power is more difficult, because many of its crucial resources are outside the control of governments, and their effects depend heavily on acceptance by the receiving audiences. Moreover, soft power resources often work indirectly by shaping the environment for policy, and sometimes take years to produce the desired outcomes. Of course, these differences are matters of degree. Not all wars or economic actions promptly produce desired outcomes-witness the length and ultimate failure of the Vietnam War, or the fact that economic sanctions have historically produced their intended outcomes in only about a third of the cases where they were tried. i In Iraq, Saddam Hussein survived sanctions for more than a decade, and although the four-week military campaign broke his regime, it was only a first step toward achieving American objectives in Iraq. As one former military officer has observed, the mark of a great campaign is not what it destroys, but what it creates, and on that question the jury will remain out for a number of years on the Iraq War. ii Moreover, sometimes dissemination of information can quickly produce or prevent a desired outcome. But generally, softpower resources are slower, more diffuse, and more cumbersome to wield than hardpower resources.

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