It’s about time: Strategy and temporal phenomena

ABSTRACT

Strategy is action in space and time. It is impossible to conceive of strategic behaviour outside of time, and the management of temporal factors plays a substantial role in determining the path and outcome of conflict. Yet time’s role in strategy has been empirically under-studied and theoretically neglected by scholars. This paper addresses this by identifying four constituent concepts of time for strategists: Order, Duration, Significance and Transition. The paper explores how each applies to and can improve our understanding of strategic behaviour. The paper concludes by outlining some of the promising avenues of policy opportunity and scholarly research.

KEYWORDS:

• Time
• strategy
• strategic theory
• defence planning

Acknowledgements

This paper evolved over several major iterations. The author would like to thank the following people for their insight and support, Robert Ayson, Stephan Frühling, Anthea McCarthy-Jones, Paul Dibb, Iain Henry, John Blaxland and the two anonymous peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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² Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 42.

³ Dean Buonomano, Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time (W. W. Norton, 2017), 6.

⁴ Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), xii.

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⁶ Hew Strachan, Strategy and Contingency, International Affairs, 87, no.6 (2011): 1281–1296, 1295–6.

⁷ Gray, Modern Strategy, 42.

⁸ Gray, Modern Strategy, 43.

⁹ Laure Paquette, ‘Strategy and Time in Clausewitz’ on War and in Sun Tzu’s the Art of War’, Comparative Strategy 10/1 (1991) 37–51, 40.

¹⁰ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1976), 597.

¹¹ Frans P.B. Osinga, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 27.

¹² Robert Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War (San Bernardino, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017).

¹³ Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, xxi.

¹⁴ Ajay Singh, ‘Time: The New Dimension in War’, Joint Force Quarterly 98/5th Anniversary Issue (1998) 124–29. Phillip S. Meilinger, ‘Time in War’, Joint Force Quarterly 87/4th Quarter (2017) 93–100.

¹⁵ Singh, ‘Time: The New Dimension in War’, 61.; Meilinger, ‘Time in War’, 100.

¹⁶ Meilinger, ‘Time in War’, 99.

¹⁷ Thomas Hughes, ‘The Cult of the Quick’, Aerospace Power Journal 15/4 (2001) 57–68, 57–58.

¹⁸ Hughes, ‘The Cult of the Quick’, 58.

¹⁹ B.A Friedman, On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2017), 57.

²⁰ David M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017), 2–4.

²¹ One new work in this field explicitly draws on notions of time to explain behaviour: David Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers. For most contributions on power transition theory, times role is left implicit: Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? (Melbourne, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2017); Woosang Kim and Scott Gates, ‘Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China’, International Area Studies Review 18/3 (2015) 219–26.

²² Joseph S. Nye, The Future of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 157–58.

²³ Paquette, ‘Strategy and Time in Clausewitz’s on War and in Sun Tzu’s the Art of War’, 38.

²⁴ Niall Ferguson, ‘An Empire in Denial’, Harvard International Review, 06/09/2003.

²⁵ Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton University Press, 1998), 66.

²⁶ Mingjiang Li and Kalyan M. Kemburi, China’s Power and Asian Security (Milton Park, Abgindon: Taylor & Francis, 2014), 77.

²⁷ Nina Silove, ‘Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of “Grand Strategy”,’ Security Studies 27/1 (2018) 27–57, 32–33.

²⁸ Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy, Second Edition (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), 322; Paul Kennedy, Grand Strategies in War & Peace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 4.

²⁹ Stephen D. Krasner, Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (Taylor & Francis, 2009), 94.

³⁰ Anthea McCarthy-Jones and Mark Macdonald Turner, ‘Policy Transfer through Time and the Search for Legitimacy in Developing Nations’, Politics & Policy 43/2 (2015), 215–38.

³¹ For a critical discussion of this assumption in relation to spatial terms see Patrick Porter, The Global Village Myth: Distance, War, and the Limits of Power (Georgetown University Press: Washington DC, 2015), 195–96.

³² Max Smeets, ‘A Matter of Time: On the Transitory Nature of Cyberweapons’, Journal of Strategic Studies 41/1–2 (2018) 6–32, 21.

³³ Smeets, ‘A Matter of Time: On the Transitory Nature of Cyberweapons’, 3.

³⁴ Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 6. I thank Nina Silove for the pointer to this work.

³⁵ For instance Leonhard identifies five features of time: duration, frequency, sequence, opportunity and surprise. Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, 14–15.

³⁶ Until the invention of time machines that is.

³⁷ Clausewitz, On War, 228.

³⁸ J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 24.

³⁹ Friedman, On Tactics, 60.

⁴⁰ Freedman, Strategy: A History, 197–8.

⁴¹ Joshua D. Kertzer, ‘Resolve, Time and Risk’, International Organization 71/S1 (2017) S109-S36, s116.

⁴² Ronald R. Krebs and Aaron Rapport, ‘International Relations and the Psychology of Time Horizons’, International Studies Quarterly 56/3 (2012) 530–43, 534.

⁴³ Krebs and Rapport, ‘International Relations and the Psychology of Time Horizons’, 532.

⁴⁴ Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers, 10.

⁴⁵ Kertzer, ‘Resolve, Time and Risk’, S109.

⁴⁶ Kertzer, ‘Resolve, Time and Risk’, S126.

⁴⁷ Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defence Planning (Washington D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1982).

⁴⁸ Adam Frank, About Time: From Sundials to Quantum Clocks, How the Cosmos Shapes Our Lives—and We Shape the Cosmos (London: Oneworld Publications, 2013), xii.

⁴⁹ Andrew Davies and Patrick Kennedy, ‘From Little Things: Quantum Technologies and Their Application to Defence’ (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2017).

⁵⁰ Stephan Frühling, Defence Planning and Uncertainty: Preparing for the Next Asia-Pacific War (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 33.

⁵¹ Jack Davis, ‘Strategic Warning: If Surprise Is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?,’ in Occasional Paper (Langley: Sherman Kent Centre for Intelligence Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, 2003), 3.

⁵² Davis, ‘Strategic Warning: If Surprise Is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?,’ 3.

⁵³ Frühling, Defence Planning and Uncertainty, 33.

⁵⁴ Paul Dibb, ‘The Conceptual Basis of Australia’s Defence Planning and Force Structure Development’, in Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence (Canberra: Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1992), 1.

⁵⁵ Frühling, Defence Planning and Uncertainty, 52.

⁵⁶ Alan Dupont, ‘Australia’s Threat Perceptions: A Search for Security’ (Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 1991), 88.

⁵⁷ For a contemporary use of warning time, see Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith, ‘Australia’s Management of Strategic Risk in the New Era’, in Insights (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2017).

⁵⁸ Strachan, Strategy and Contingency, 1281.

⁵⁹ Clausewitz, On War, 238.

⁶⁰ Harold Nelson, ‘Space and Time in on War’, in Clausewitz and Modern Strategy, ed. M.I. Handel (Abingdon, Oxon: Frank Cass & Co Ltd, 2004), 138–42.

⁶¹ Clausewitz, On War, 357.

⁶² Thomas Thayer, quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, Penguin Press, New York, 2012, 279.

⁶³ Ricks, The Generals, 279.

⁶⁴ Lynne O’Donnell and Rahim Faiez, ‘Afghan Taliban Announces Spring Offensive’, APnews.com, 12/04/2016.

⁶⁵ Stephen Biddle, ‘Afghanistan Needs a Settlement, Not Another Troop-Withdrawal Deadline’, Defence One, 07/06/2016.

⁶⁶ Vladimir Prebilič, ‘Theoretical Aspects of Military Logistics’, Defence and Security Analysis 22/2 (2006) 159–77, 165.

⁶⁷ Tom Miles, ‘Syrian Opposition Proposes Nationwide Ramadan Truce’, Reuters.com, 02/06/2016.

⁶⁸ Peter Bergen, ‘It Could Be a Long, Deadly Ramadan’, CNN.com, 31/05/2017.

⁶⁹ See, for instance, the role windows play in the analysis of Stephen Van Evera, ‘Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War’, Intenational Security 22/4 (1998) 5–43.

⁷⁰ James A. Rawley, Turning Points of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 143.

⁷¹ Bruce Schneier, ‘Crypto-Gram’, https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2000/0915.html.

⁷² Smeets, ‘A Matter of Time: On the Transitory Nature of Cyberweapons’.

⁷³ Scott D. Sagan, ‘The Korean Missile Crisis: Why Deterrence Is Still the Best Option’, Foreign Affairs 96/6 (2017) 72–82, 73.

⁷⁴ Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, Kindle Edition ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 21.

⁷⁵ Dudziak, War Time, 33–62.

⁷⁶ Dudziak, War Time, 31.

⁷⁷ Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the End of Combat Operations in Iraq’ (Washington D.C: Office of the Press Secretary, White House, United States of America, 2010).

⁷⁸ Dudziak, War Time, 8.

⁷⁹ Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defence Planning.

⁸⁰ Clausewitz, On War, 222.

⁸¹ Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, 42.

⁸² Clausewitz, On War, 128.

⁸³ James Q. Whitman, The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012).

⁸⁴ Hom, Silent Order: The Temporal Turn in International Relations, 305.

⁸⁵ Freedman, Strategy: A History, 615.

⁸⁶ Garry Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1996).

⁸⁷ Cohen, The Political Value of Time, 101.

⁸⁸ Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers, 153–154.

⁸⁹ Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Penguin Books, 2012).

⁹⁰ Elizabeth F. Cohen, The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 2–3.

⁹¹ Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Article IX, 3.

⁹² Marco Pinfari ‘Time to Agree: Is Time Pressure Good for Peace Negotiations’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 55 no. 5 (2011) 683–709.

⁹³ Cohen, The Political Value of Time, 3.

⁹⁴ David Jordan et al., Understanding Modern Warfare, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2016, 96–97.

⁹⁵ Jordan et al., Understanding Modern Warfare, 55.

⁹⁶ Freedman, Strategy: A History, xv.

⁹⁷ Buonomano, Your Brain Is a Time Machine, 5.

⁹⁸ Andrew R. Hom, ‘Silent Order: the Temporal Turn in Critical International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 46/3 (2018) 303–330, 307–308.

⁹⁹ Gray, Modern Strategy, 43.

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Andrew Carr

Andrew Carr is a Senior Lecturer in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. His research focuses on strategy, middle powers and Australian defence policy. He has published with Oxford University Press, Georgetown University Press and journals such as Asia Policy, and the Australian Journal of International Affairs. Dr Carr is the editor of the Centre of Gravity policy paper series.