Conflicting time and space perceptions, seated in the cultural centers of societies and rooted in social rituals and patterns of life, are important aspects of strategic interaction. In some societies, these spatiotemporal perceptions play a major role in defining social order; in others, they provide undercurrents of dissention and social cleavages. This article explores how shifting aspects of spatial determinants influence policy behavior, particularly the influence of temporal intensification—the acceleration of social and political life. We argue that cultural aspects of space and time are dangerously underrepresented in military science and in studies of the cultural determinants of security policy. Especially in modern strategic planning, the expectation that military organizations can simultaneously compress time and control space influences the cultural as well as practical sides of the policy decision of when and how to use military force. After reviewing the rise of Western time orientations and current US military theory, the article explores aspects of military doctrines that unconsciously assign high priority to time dominance.
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References
1.
Napoleon quoted in David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Scribner, 1966), 149–149.
2.
Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 102–102
3.
Robert R. Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), xviii–xviii.
4.
Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 172–172.
5.
Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 274–274.
6.
Ibid., 275–276.
7.
Raymond Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1992), 27–27.
8.
Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May have also considered the role of temporal thinking in crisis decision-making. See Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Free Press1986), 247–270.
9.
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 277–277.
10.
For an overview of human spatiotemporal thinking, see John Campbell, Past, Space, Self (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1994). For a very scientific explanation of the perceptual phenomena, see Jochen Musseler, “Perceiving and Measuring of Spatiotemporal Events” in S. Jordan (ed.), Modeling Consciousness Across the Disciplines (Lanham, MD: University Press of America Inc., 1999), 95–112.
11.
For a general background discussion on the cultural and social basis of these perceptions, visit: Times of Our Lives: Investigations into Socio-Chronology, time studies resource page, available online at http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/time.html#in. Also see Yi-Fu Tan, “Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame,” in Making Sense of Time, ed. Tommy Carlstein, Don Parkes, and Nigel Thrift (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978).
12.
Edward T. Hall, The Dance of Life: The Other Dimensions of Time (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983), 43–43, 50–50. Also cited by Michael C. Kearl, Depart-ment of Sociology and Anthropology, Trinity University, at http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/time-c.html.
13.
Hall, Dance of Life, 50–50. Cited by Michael C. Kearl, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Trinity University, at http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/time-c.html
14.
Allen C. Bluedorn reviews research on time orientations in “Time and Organizational Culture,” in Handbook of Organizational Culture and Change, ed. Neal M. Ashkanasy, Celeste P. M. Wilderon, and Mark F. Peterson (London: Sage Publications, 2000), 122–123.
15.
Bill Gates, Business At the Speed of Thought (New York: Warner Books, 1999), xiii–xiii.
16.
For examples, see Alexander Waugh, Time: Its Origin, Its Enigma, Its History (New York: Carroll & Graff, 1999) and Lawrence Wright, Clockwork Man: The Story of Time, Its Origins, Its Uses, Its Tyranny (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992).
17.
Kern attributes this observation to the noted British diplomat Harold Nicholson on p. 274 and in footnote 37, p. 358.
18.
Carlene E. Stephens discusses this in “Before Standard Time: Distributing Time in 19th Century America,”Vistas in Astronomy28, 1 (1985): 113–118. Another perspective is offered by Ian R. Bartky, “The Adoption of Standard Time,” Technology and Culture 30, 1 (1989): 25–56.
19.
See Carlene E. Stephens, “The Most Reliable Time: William Bond, the New England Railroads, and Time Awareness in 19th Century America,”Technology and Culture30, 1 (1989):1–24.
20.
Ibid., 12.
21.
For fascinating overviews of the history of timekeeping and of the US Naval Observatory and its mission, visit the USNO Web site at http://www.usno.navy.mil. The Web site of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK, also provides an excellent overview of the development of chronometers; see http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk
22.
Jeremy Rifkin, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987), 193–193.
23.
Ibid., 193.
24.
James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).
25.
Ibid., 13.
26.
Michael Noonan and John Hillen provide the term decisive action as a label consolidating the rapid decisive operations and related time- and space-dominance arguments. See Michael P. Noonan and John Hillen, “The Coming Transformation of the U.S. Military?” in E-Notes, an electronic bulletin of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (Philadelphia, PA: Foreign Policy Research Institute, February 4, 2002).
27.
Leonhard, Fighting by Minutes, 6–12. During the Cold War, the US routinely flew monitoring aircraft around the perimeter of the Soviet air defense sensor grid to test its sensitivity and responsiveness. William E. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York: Random House, 1986), 58–59.
28.
David Jablonsky, “Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Metaphors for a Period of Transition,”Parameters27, 4 (Winter 1997–98): 5–5.
29.
Bluedorn, Time and Organizational Culture, 117–117.
30.
Gleick, Faster, 12–12.
31.
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 147–147.
32.
Ibid., 306.
33.
Chris Demchak outlines the progression of these ideas over the past decade in “Watershed in Perception and Knowledge,”Contemporary Security Policy20, 3 (December 1999), 166–197.
34.
Rifkin, Time Wars, 222–222.
35.
Gray, Modern Strategy, 172–172.
36.
James Der Derian develops the idea of surveillance leading to “anti-diplomacy.” See James Der Derian, “Anti-Diplomacy, Intelligence Theory and Surveillance Practice,” in Espionage, Past, Present, Future? ed. Wesley K. Wark (Essex, UK: Frank Cass, 1994), 29–51.
37.
See Alexander L. George, “The Tension Between ‘Military Logic’ and Requirements of Diplomacy in Crisis Management,” in Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management, ed. Alexander L. George (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 13–21.
38.
Bluedorn, Time and Organizational Culture, 118–118.
