Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 55

Soviets was apolitical—it was a fantasy war at the end
What is the Function of Time?
of history. The winner would survive; the loser’s society
All social science questions involve time as an interwould be annihilated. All the annoying questions of
dependent variable. L.P. Hartley’s now aphoristic line,
sociopolitical context wer e excluded from the scenario.
“The past is a foreign country,” is but one illustration of
Therefore, during operations, neither tactical
why time makes cause and effect questions so comprinciples nor tactical aims would be questioned even
plicated and difficult to answer.10 Explaining complex
though tactical principles left room for applying judgevents such as warfare in the kind of out-of-time rules
ment. The relatively consistent tactical successes of
used in hard science is impossible. In hard science,
U.S. forces, especially since the 1970s, provided proof.
rules are rules because they nearly always explain and
Consistent application of position, cover, fires, compredict things that happen. On the other hand, answermunication, and so on, led to successful operations.
ing why the Hundred Years War happened is not the
The sum of all this experience reinforced the idea that
same as explaining why Vietnam happened. Whatever
a quantitative approach produced tactical success.
the broad similarities, the differences from one case to
Tactical success became an end in itself, separate from
another tend to be greater.
the uncomfortable complexities of war as politics in
The United States surged 30,000 troops into
extremis. Military science increasingly came to be seen, Afghanistan in 2008 based largely on military arguerroneously, as a scientific branch of the hard sciences.
ments that a successful surge into Iraq in 2006 would
It had become no more than quasi-scientific at best,
predict a successful surge in Afghanistan. One problem
pseudoscientific at worst.
with this way of thinking was that it assumed simiThe problems of war and warfare, in reality, are
lar conditions in each state. In reality, the differences
not quantifiable problems of the hard sciences because
between the societies in Iraq and Afghanistan were
they involve the behavior of human beings. As Nobel
considerable according to analysts Rick Nelson, Nathan
Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg noted, “It
Freier, and Maren Leed.11 Neither the problems nor
has been an essential element in
the success of science to distinguish
those problems that are and are not
illuminated by taking human beings into account.”9 Social scientists
seek to understand and explain
why people do things. Students of
warfare using a qualitative approach would seek to understand
why people started wars, ended
wars, and prosecuted wars in
certain ways and at certain times.
Answering any of these questions
would involve getting at the subjective motivations of kings, generals,
soldiers, and civilians. The ongoing
difficulty is creating a reasonably
objective science of fundamentally
subjective phenomena. Military
commanders need to see their
lifelong professional role as active
Afghan National Army special forces and commandos, 6th Special Operations Kandak,
participants in the effort to build
prepare to clear a series of compounds during an operation in the Nejrab District, Kapisa
the discipline of war studies as a
Province, Afghanistan, 27 May 2014. ANASF, assisted by USSF, conducted the operation
social science.
to disrupt insurgent freedom of maneuver in the area.
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U.S. Army photo by Spc. Connor Mendez

STRATEGIC SUCCESS