Dangerous Thresholds
Managing Escalation in the 21st Century
Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition. When such competition entails military confrontation or war, the pressure to escalate can become intense due to the potential cost of losing contests of deadly force. Cold War–era thinking about escalation focused on the dynamics of bipolar, superpower confrontation and strategies to control it. Today's security environment, however, demands that the United States be prepared for a host of escalatory threats involving not only long-standing nuclear powers, but also new, lesser nuclear powers and irregular adversaries, such as insurgent groups and terrorists. This examination of escalation dynamics and approaches to escalation management draws on historical examples from World War I to the struggle against global Jihad. It reveals that, to manage the risks of escalatory chain reactions in future conflicts, military and political leaders will need to understand and dampen the mechanisms of deliberate, accidental, and inadvertent escalation. Informing the analysis are the results of two modified Delphi exercises, which focused on a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan and a potential conflict between states and nonstate actors in the event of a collapse of Pakistan's government.
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Document Details
- Copyright: RAND Corporation
- Availability: Available
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 274
- List Price: $35.00
- Price: $28.00
- ISBN/EAN: 9780833042132
- Document Number: MG-614-AF
- Year: 2008
- Series: Monographs
Contents
Chapter One
Introduction
Chapter Two
The Nature of Escalation
Chapter Three
China's Thinking on Escalation: Evidence from Chinese Military Writings
Chapter Four
Regional Nuclear Powers
Chapter Five
Escalation in Irregular Warfare
Chapter Six
Managing Escalation in a Complex World
Appendix A
China, Force, and Escalation: Continuities Between Historical Behavior and Contemporary Writings
Appendix B
Case Studies of Escalation in Stability Operations
Appendix C
Modified Method for Delphi Analyses
Book Review Excerpts
"According to the authors, ‘escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition’. This volume analyses the escalatory threats faced by the United States in the military realm, and looks at how the government can ‘dampen the mechanisms of deliberate, accidental, and inadvertent escalation’ given current security conditions."
- Survival, April-May 2009
The research described in this report was sponsored by the United States Air Force and conducted by RAND Project AIR FORCE.
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