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How Western political and military institutions carry certain perceptions of time; how perceptions of time shape the Western conduct in war; and what it means for the future of Western military power—these are questions we examine in this book. We do so in three parts that investigate the three distinct dimensions of Western power outlined above: its political trajectory and import, its conflicted perceptions of time depending on normative context, and its ingrained habit of seeking to control the pace of war.

The political trajectory section zooms in on the political and military institutions that lie at the heart of Western liberal government and, supposedly, offer a unique path to the strategically controlled mobilization of societal power for military policy. Thus part I is concerned with the underlying question, as we have seen, of whether the rise of the West must be confined to a short and largely accidental burst of nineteenth-century imperial energy, or whether it is more intimately tied to a type of government whose principles were articulated millennia ago. The chapters of this section trace and question Western institutional foundations in three distinct timespans, and from three distinct angles.

The first chapter covers the last 600–700 years of modern state development and investigates the implications of changing models of war finances for the liberal-military balance within Western states. Its conclusion, pessimistic from the point of view of enduring Western power, is that war finances for most of this time have tended to erode rather than reinforce this balancing act at the heart of Western government.

Chapter 2 covers 200 years of strategic thinking, tracing how Napoleonic warfare favored a certain type of politico-military thinking that rubbed against civilian or liberal communities within the West and thus exacerbated civil–military unease. The effort to solve tensions by moving further into the paradigm of Napoleonic warfare, the chapter concludes, is tempting but also futile.

Chapter 3 covers the thirty post–Cold War years, analyzing the trajectory of NATO partnerships and the match between liberally inspired collective action and complex modern military operations. It concludes that NATO has repeatedly fallen for the temptation to shape partnership policy to expedient military needs, in turn eroding its long-term capacity to integrate liberal principle and military power in its partnership structure.

Scenario chapters conclude each section and while the stories they tell are fictive, they illustrate how the tensions identified in the previous sections could come together to diminish Western military power in the future. The scenario in chapter 4 that concludes part I envisages the end of the US participation in NATO and asks the reader to ponder whether NATO is the face of the West, as it is often thought to be, or merely a façade for US leadership. In other words, should we effectively cease to think of “the West” as a force of international order—and has its trajectory come to an end?

Part II focuses on the normative context as a foundation of Western military power. It zooms in on how existing norms represent dominant actors’ perceptions of politics, identity, and war, and how contemporary challenges to the normative order are thus based on diverging perceptions of time. Western countries and Western institutions have long regarded themselves as guardians of the international normative order, but norms are not static; they emerge, change, and fall away over time because of invested actors (so-called norm entrepreneurs) and changing circumstances.⁴⁵ Part II investigates the significance of these changes for fundamental norms of war and warfare.

Chapter 5 analyzes how different perceptions of time among allies and between the tactical and strategic levels exacerbated the potential for civilian casualties in NATO’s engagement in Afghanistan, despite a strong and increasing focus on norms of civilian protection. It cautions that focus on the minimization of civilian casualties can distract from fundamental questions such as campaign strategy and management; a distraction such as this increases campaign duration, which in turn increases the potential for civilian casualties.

Chapter 6 considers how the erosion of the norm of non-intervention enshrined in the United Nations Charter has created indeterminacy and disagreement among Western actors. The West is torn between two temporalities—a need for swift intervention to protect civilians on the one hand, and a wish to avoid protracted armed conflict on the other. This allows competitors such as Russia and China to justify their own actions by reference to these norms and create their own interpretations of them, using the West’s own legal argumentation.

Chapter 7 analyzes new forms of conflict in the gray zone between war and peace. It argues that these forms of conflict exploit the Western self-binding obligation to respect international norms based on a clear distinction between wartime and peacetime, consequently slowing down a possible Western response. Nevertheless, the chapter concludes, there is strength in the Western perception of war- and peacetime as separate, allowing for a more appropriate, comprehensive reaction to challenges in the gray zone.

Finally, the scenario in chapter 8 envisions China taking control over parts of Djibouti as a fait accompli and asks the reader to consider how the West could respond in light of these developments of the normative order.

Part III looks at the changing character of war, and its impact on the Western ability to generate military power, addressing the issue of pace in modern warfare. Battlefields in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, and the Sahel have demonstrated that non-state actors were able to employ cheap technological solutions to drastically maximize their fighting power, thereby partly catching up with Western forces.⁴⁶ Simultaneously, strategic competitors such as Russia and China are adopting military policies specifically designed to counter Western advantages.⁴⁷ These policies include investment in emerging technologies (including hypervelocity missiles, cyber, and artificial intelligence), anti-access/anti-denial strategies designed to negate Western military advantages, and competition below the threshold of open conflict through subversion and sabotage in order to paralyze Western strategic decision-making mechanisms. The pace of modern warfare is therefore paradoxical for Western forces: adversaries are attempting to slow it down at the operational and strategic levels, while it is accelerating at the tactical level.

This section looks at such challenges, highlighting the tension caused by the desire to optimize for speed and the battlefield challenges encountered by Western forces (chapter 9) and the civil-military and operational problems raised by an undue focus on speed through superior information (chapter 10). Chapter 11 dispels some preconceptions about the (negative) consequences of speed (through the banalization of artificial intelligence or hypervelocity glide vehicles) for strategic stability, while the scenario (chapter 12) asks whether Western armed forces would still be able to fight if they were denied one of the key enablers of their speed of operations: digital communications. By questioning this perception of time favoring speed on the battlefield, this section therefore raises uncomfortable questions about the sustainability of Western military power.