I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
William Shakespeare (in Richard II)
Time is on my side, yes it is
The Rolling Stones (from “Time is on my side”)
Time in conflict
How important is time, and how is it used, in the current US-Iran war? In the Ukrainian counterattacks against Russia? What are the primary goals often found in ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon? What role does time play in Jacob Zuma’s various litigation events?
One of the most important dynamics in most of conflicts is also one of the most understudied. We use it, suffer from it, or try to prevent it in our litigation, our political disputes, our workplace conflicts, even our interpersonal disagreements all have clear examples of this conflict tool. Delays, postponements, distractions and deflections, time is used to buy more time, to delay results, to wear down opponents, to rally, to reconsider, to talk, to breathe.
At some stage in any important conflict, we need time, we start thinking about its use, its absence, its value. If we only had more of it, if only we started earlier, or we are satisfied with how we used time to our advantage. Those who understand the building blocks of conflict invariably have important advantages of those who do not consider time as a conflict asset, or who believe that time is a set fixture in conflict, a reality that we can do nothing about.
Once we start studying and working with time in conflicts in a serious, focused manner, we notice an important fact. With few exceptions, delay is not an absence of strategy. It is a specific use of time. It is the conversion of time from a shared, lived experience to a contested resource. It determines ongoing conflict dynamics – who waits, who bleeds, who can survive the wait, and the costs involved in the use of time. Time, as we will see, is so much more than just attrition, or guerrilla warfare. It is its own, crucially important, conflict instrument.
Why is time in conflict understudied?
Time is invisible, and other than planning our days around it, not too many of us view time as something that we can influence. Time is what it is, an hour is an hour, and we all have the same amount of hours in a day. That is of course true, to an extent, and yet some conflicts have actors that just seem to have more time at their disposal, they seem “luckier” when it comes to time and timing, they are hardly ever surprised or short on time. And yet time is often either ignored during strategizing, or used only by implication, as a set piece that we must simply find space for.
Time is of course not completely ignored in conflict studies, it is just understudied, in my view, especially when we start to understand how crucially important a high level of understanding of its potential is to our conflict outcomes. The work of Thomas Schelling, for example, has shown us the logic of coercion, or the threat of future pain, over time, and how this creates and influences the costs of opposing such threats or applied pressure. Eric Luttwak established the paradox of sometimes doing less, or doing that more slowly, in a conflict, over time, with greater coercive results.
Von Clausewitz taught us (in On War) that time is a factor that both sides need but that the question is who derives the best advantage from it, Mao Zedong (in On Protracted War) showed that time itself can reverse the correlation of forces. There are other valuable works available (see suggested reading list below).
Western strategic culture in particular, especially since 1945, has developed a cult of the quick, where scholars and practitioners default to spatial and force-centric analysis and strategy. Space and force make time irrelevant, or so some of these strategies seem to argue. We often experience delay as inaction. I emphasize time in my own consulting and theoretical work, so it may be helpful to start contributing to a conceptual vocabulary for practical use and discussion. Let’s look at a few helpful explanatory concepts and terms.
Time: a conceptual framework
a. Temporal coercion
Students and practitioners need to understand and study time, and specifically duration itself, as an instrument of pressure. Unlike kinetic coercion, it does not destroy capability, but it raises the cost of holding a position. Actual financial cost, political cost and reputational harm, exhaustion (of staff, in-group base), opportunity loss, narrative decay or of decay of political will, all contribute over time to the costs of holding a position, to continue fighting. All of those conflict factors need time for such dynamics to come into play, to have a role in a given conflict. A party that wants such realities to play a role in that conflict must allow sufficient time for that to play its part, a party that wants to prevent such a dynamic from playing a role should seek to ensure no or insufficient time for such events. Conflict escalation, de-escalation or delay become crucial tools.
b. Chronopolitics
Alan Geyer’s wonderful word that we all apply from time to time: whose time matters, whose horizon is shorter, who gets to run the calendar, what happens when there is more or less time. As some of my earlier work on Chinese conflict management hint at, we are also seeing an interesting divergence between Chinese strategic thinking that views time as a conflict domain (see their use of the terms “time battlefield” and “time war”, for instance), while Western conflict terminology and application still mostly treats time as a background.
c. Temporal asymmetry
Another concept that can help us understand, and discuss, time as a conflict tool. Practically speaking, this concept turns time into a weapon. As most politicians, trial lawyers and conflict practitioners will know, conflict opponents live on different clocks. One can wait, the other cannot, or those waiting times are of different importance, or the costs are different, or the ability or willingness to pay those costs differ, or change during a conflict.
An understanding of this brings into play an increasingly important geopolitical conflict dynamic: democracies usually have shorter political clocks than autocracies and other political models have. Home advantage can be turned into a time advantage also, as Iran is again making clear in the current US-Iran war.
The four clocks
Conflict realities involving time crystalizes at least four “clocks” or conflict measurements that can be helpfully incorporated into strategic decision-making. They are easily identifiable, and there are of course some overlaps, with some examples:
i. The political clock Elections, coalitions, budgets, public attention, scandals, social media narratives, campaigns, alliances.
ii. The operational clock Readiness, rotations, repair times, staff availability, resources.
iii. The industrial clock Production rates, output, replacement of lost or damaged systems.
iv. The narrative clock How long does outrage last, legitimacy, reach and duration of “the story”, identity conflict dynamics.
Types of delay
In building a specific conceptual framework I believe that a few examples of categories of delay can be of practical use, either in debate or actual operational strategies. I want to emphasize again that, for maximum accuracy, these delays should not primarily be seen as weakness or simple lack of preparedness, they are, more often than not, very specific conflict techniques.
i. Fabian delays
Named after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, nicknamed “the Delayer”, and applying these strategies, such a delay is built around the avoidance of any decisive battle, of harassing, trading space for time and waiting for a later (often indistinctly understood) decision or event. Simply put, it refuses to fight the stronger enemy’s war on that enemy’s clock. To emphasize: the Fabian delay is not about slowness, it names a specific type of delay, one that is chosen, operational, and one built on the reversal of forces over time, rather than seeking an early decision.
ii. Protractive delays
Here the operating principle is to refuse the short war the stronger side wants. Mao was a master at this strategy. Time now becomes the conflict tool that reverses the balance of forces itself, and it is not just a survival tool.
iii. Procedural delay
Probably our most prevalent example in a modern society. Corrosive and potentially harmful of society’s long term best interests, it can be extremely effective for at least one party in these modern conflicts. It is an institutional type of stalling: talks without settlement, legal process with delays, an absence of decision, appeals, postponements, working groups, commissions (as we have so many examples of), deadlines that keep sliding. This is excused (and condoned) as unavoidable friction, while in reality it is often just a form of false, deceptive negotiation, with no bona fide intention to agree.
iv. Cognitive delay or weaponized hesitation
Here the master forces the opponent’s decision cycle to lag behind events, most often by operating purposefully in the grey zone where authorization cannot keep up with recognition. The benefits of tempo is transferred without a shot.
v. Narrative delay
Here the strategy is to wait out attention. Shock and disapproval become routine, outrage turns into fatigue, the abnormal is reclassified as the new normal. In line with my earlier work on cognitive warfare, time here works on audiences, not armies.
vi. Chronometric (technical) delay
This is the precision timing type of delay found in GPS / PNT attacks, denial of timing, with expiring transitory cyber tools or the developing field of strategic anachrony, all maybe more useful in our cognitive warfare discussions (see my earlier work on this).
A few examples of time in conflict
Time becomes more visible as a conflict reality when we consider some well-known public conflicts. Iran’s ability to hold out in the first weeks of the US attacks against it in the current war, Ukraine’s ability to similarly hold out against Russia, both instances of war that were supposed to be over in a matter of days, South African examples where well-known political and other public figures managed to delay justice and decisions for years using legal processes and delays, political failures being deflected by promises of improvement at the net elections, and daily examples of the use of time in conflicts make this one of those conflict dynamics that become impossible to miss once you know what to look out for.
When understood, and applied, as a conflict tool, time becomes a powerful weapon of offense or defence. One of the most visible examples is John Boyd’s OODA loop / cycle where how we act under pressure (observe, orient, decide, act) where time becomes an extremely effective conflict tool if we can use these decision cycles to try to complete that loop faster and more accurately than the opponent, thereby getting inside their cycle and having an effect on it. Practically speaking, and when done correctly, the lagging opponent is then reacting to a world that has already changed.
Time and delay as specific strategies
When we get to specific strategies using time, we can expand our earlier conceptual framework to now also focus on the analytical dimensions of time. We can break up and consider our strategic thinking and planning around the following categories:
Duration – how long can pressure be applied or sustained. Frequency – how often is the opponent forced to react. Sequence – a much underrated conflict dynamic, especially when used in conjunction with time / timing, sequence of conflict events include considerations such as who acts first, who is forced to wait, who sets the deadline and so on.
Opportunity – the conflict ripeness of the situation, often here for our purposes a moment designed to be achieved by the skilful use of time.
Transition – the often overlooked or mistimed moment when delay stops being useful, and becomes self-defeating or counterproductive.
A helpful and practical distinction here is to distinguish between chronos (clock time, measurable time as we know it), and kairos (that precise, opportune moment).
In my own consulting work I find the four categories proposed by Andrew Carr (order, duration, significance and transition) to be indispensable as a point of departure. As any student of music or chess will instinctively sense, time becomes more usable in conflict when we understand the temp of a given moment, its risks, its potential and its alternatives. Tempo creates small advantages that can make the difference, that can alter perceptions, affect morale, tip the scales. Tempo can be chosen, or it can be imposed, and we need to read and apply it and its remedies in real time.
Attacking your opponent’s clock also generally implies that you need to be able to secure your own clock. Failing to do so may negate or offset any of your own advantages. Time as conflict instrument is also not always a sudden event, and the advantages of low-pressure coercion over long time horizons, in the correct setting, can in itself make time an ally in your conflict strategies.
Understanding and using time as conflict tool
Time in the hands of a conflict master is a most powerful tool. Victory often belongs to the side that forces its opponent onto a faster, more unstable clock. Because it is so understudied and hardly ever formally understood and applied, it is often the major conflict dynamic, but one that the opponents do not fully integrate into their strategies. Everyone is aware of the clock, but it is not seen as an actual conflict tool.
Conclusion
I am often asked what then is the best strategy as far as time and timing is concerned. As our brief discussion here has hopefully showed, there can be no generalized rule, and the best conflict outcomes will be achieved by a combination of high skill levels, information and experience. Time is also not a static part of conflict, it speeds up and slows down, and we can play a role in that fluidity of applying this tool in our favour, or prevent or mitigate its effects when it is being used against us. If we take time seriously as a conflict study focus, we can see that time can indeed wait, for a brief while, for some of us.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. It’s about time by Andrew Carr, Journal of Strategic Studies (20180, at https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1529569
2. A Tale of Two Clocks: A Framework for Assessing Time Pressure and Advantage in the Russo-Ukrainian War by David Gioe and Tony Manganello, Sage (2023), at https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X221145690
3. Fighting by Minutes by Robert R. Leonhard, Praeger (2018)
4. Our blog at www.conflict-conversations.co.za has a rich variety of articles expanding on specific aspects of the article.
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok
September 2026
* Author’s note on the use of artificial intelligence in writing this article
I learned to draft, argue and write in the hard school of litigation. I enjoy and value the very human process of creating ideas, of testing my own knowledge and thoughts. It is a process that I need, for answering some of my professional and even personal questions, it is cathartic and inspiring. Other than the most basic research assistance I do not use any AI in the creation of my written work, this article included. It is a matter of pride, of preference, and of mental health. Whether that is a wise choice or not, I will leave to the reader to decide.