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| ladder of escalation: On Escalation Herman Kahn, 2017-07-12 In this widely discussed and influential book, Herman Kahn probes the dynamics of escalation and demonstrates how the intensification of conflict can be depicted by means of a definite escalation ladder, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war. At each rung of the ladder, before the climb proceeds, decisions must be made based on numerous choices. Some are clear and obvious, others obscure, but the options are always there. Thermonuclear annihilation, says Kahn, is unlikely to come through accident; but nations may elect to climb the ladder to extinction. The basic material for the book was developed in briefings delivered by Kahn to military and civilian experts and revised in the light of his findings of a trip to Vietnam in the 1960s. In On Escalation he states the facts squarely. He asks the reader to face unemotionally the terrors of a world fully capable of suicide and to consider carefully the alternatives to such a path. In the never-never land of nuclear warfare, where nuclear incredulity is pervasive and paralyzing to the imagination even for the professional analyst, salient details of possible scenarios for the outbreak of war, and even more for war fighting, are largely unexplored or even unnoticed. For scenarios in which war is terminated, the issues and possibilities of which are almost completely unstudied, the situation is even worse. Kahn's discussion throws light on the terrain and gives the individual a sense of the range of possibilities and complexities involved and are useful. |
| ladder of escalation: War's Logic Antulio J. Echevarria II, 2021-02-18 Surveys how American strategic theorists have understood the nature and character of war in the twentieth century. |
| ladder of escalation: Escalation and Nuclear Option Bernard Brodie, 2015-12-08 This work stresses the importance, in making any choice of strategies-including the decision to use or refrain from using nuclear weapons-of gauging the intent behind the opponent's military moves. Dr. Brodie also suggests that the use or threat of use of tactical nuclear weapons may lead to de-escalation, that is, may check rather than promote the expansion of hostilities. The author applies his ideas about escalation to several imagined situations, examining them in relation to experiences in Europe, in the second Cuba crisis, and in Asia. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. |
| ladder of escalation: All Hell Breaking Loose Michael T. Klare, 2019-11-12 All Hell Breaking Loose is an eye-opening examination of climate change from the perspective of the U.S. military. The Pentagon, unsentimental and politically conservative, might not seem likely to be worried about climate change—still linked, for many people, with polar bears and coral reefs. Yet of all the major institutions in American society, none take climate change as seriously as the U.S. military. Both as participants in climate-triggered conflicts abroad, and as first responders to hurricanes and other disasters on American soil, the armed services are already confronting the impacts of global warming. The military now regards climate change as one of the top threats to American national security—and is busy developing strategies to cope with it. Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael Klare shows that the U.S. military sees the climate threat as imperiling the country on several fronts at once. Droughts and food shortages are stoking conflicts in ethnically divided nations, with “climate refugees” producing worldwide havoc. Pandemics and other humanitarian disasters will increasingly require extensive military involvement. The melting Arctic is creating new seaways to defend. And rising seas threaten American cities and military bases themselves. While others still debate the causes of global warming, the Pentagon is intensely focused on its effects. Its response makes it clear that where it counts, the immense impact of climate change is not in doubt. |
| ladder of escalation: Concepts and Models of Escalation Paul K. Davis, Peter J. E. Stan, 1984 This study describes a conceptual decision model for treating escalation processes in the automated war gaming of the RAND Strategy Assessment Center. It also summarizes much of what is known about Soviet views on escalation, and briefly reviews U.S. and Western European views. The study's purpose is to provide a logical structure for writing decision rules, a structure that would assure some level of coherence and completeness while encouraging rule writers to consider specific issues and to keep in mind asymmetries in the U.S., Western European, and Soviet thinking. Section II reviews the classic Western concept of escalation ladders, notes its weaknesses for two-sided war games intended to reflect Soviet-Western asymmetries, and then develops a more appropriate framework. Sections III and IV compare Western and Soviet concepts of escalation. Section V draws upon the issues of preceding sections to sketch out a conceptual escalation model. It then provides a simplified example of how the model might work in a particular scenario. Finally, Sec. VI describes a methodology for actually writing decision rules coherently. |
| ladder of escalation: Crisis and Escalation in Cyberspace Martin C. Libicki, 2012 The chances are growing that the United States will find itself in a crisis in cyberspace, with the escalation of tensions associated with a major cyberattack, suspicions that one has taken place, or fears that it might do so soon. The genesis for this work was the broader issue of how the Air Force should integrate kinetic and nonkinetic operations. Central to this process was careful consideration of how escalation options and risks should be treated, which, in turn, demanded a broader consideration across the entire crisis-management spectrum. Such crises can be managed by taking steps to reduce the incentives for other states to step into crisis, by controlling the narrative, understanding the stability parameters of the crises, and trying to manage escalation if conflicts arise from crises.--P. [4] of cover. |
| ladder of escalation: Secret Wars Austin Carson, 2020-06-09 Secret Wars is the first book to systematically analyze the ways powerful states covertly participate in foreign wars, showing a recurring pattern of such behavior stretching from World War I to U.S.-occupied Iraq. Investigating what governments keep secret during wars and why, Austin Carson argues that leaders maintain the secrecy of state involvement as a response to the persistent concern of limiting war. Keeping interventions “backstage” helps control escalation dynamics, insulating leaders from domestic pressures while communicating their interest in keeping a war contained. Carson shows that covert interventions can help control escalation, but they are almost always detected by other major powers. However, the shared value of limiting war can lead adversaries to keep secret the interventions they detect, as when American leaders concealed clashes with Soviet pilots during the Korean War. Escalation concerns can also cause leaders to ignore covert interventions that have become an open secret. From Nazi Germany’s role in the Spanish Civil War to American covert operations during the Vietnam War, Carson presents new insights about some of the most influential conflicts of the twentieth century. Parting the curtain on the secret side of modern war, Secret Wars provides important lessons about how rival state powers collude and compete, and the ways in which they avoid outright military confrontations. |
| ladder of escalation: Dangerous Thresholds Forrest E. Morgan, Karl P. Mueller, Evan S. Medeiros, Kevin L. Pollpeter, Roger Cliff, 2008-07-29 Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition, and today's security environment demands that the United States be prepared for a host of escalatory threats. This analysis of escalation dynamics and approaches to escalation management draws on a range of historical examples from World War I to the struggle against global Jihad to inform escalation-related decisionmaking. |
| ladder of escalation: China's Strategic Arsenal James M. Smith, Paul J. Bolt, 2021 This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and its political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies, an expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal, and increased great-power competition with the United States. |
| ladder of escalation: To Win a Nuclear War Michio Kaku, Afterword by Axelrod, Daniel Axelrod, 1987 To Win a Nuclear War records as fully as we are likely to find what has gone on in the minds of American leaders and nuclear strategists on this awesome subject during these fateful forty years. It is an appalling story... This book compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race.--From the foreword by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. To Win a Nuclear War provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present. Based on recently declassified Top Secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book meticulously traces how U.S. policy makers in over a dozen episodes have threatened to initiate a nuclear attack. The book also documents the surprising reasons why the war plans were never carried out and discloses the deeper, hidden meaning of the Star Wars program. |
| ladder of escalation: Inadvertent Escalation Barry R. Posen, 2014-01-13 In this sobering book, Barry R. Posen demonstrates how the interplay between conventional military operations and nuclear forces could, in conflicts among states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, inadvertently produce pressures for nuclear escalation. Knowledge of these hidden pressures, he believes, may help some future decision maker avoid catastrophe.Building a formidable argument that moves with cumulative force, he details the way in which escalation could occur not by mindless accident, or by deliberate preference for nuclear escalation, but rather as a natural accompaniment of land, naval, or air warfare at the conventional level. Posen bases his analysis on an empirical study of the east-west military competition in Europe during the 1980s, using a conceptual framework drawn from international relations theory, organization theory, and strategic theory.The lessons of his book, however, go well beyond the east-west competition. Since his observations are relevant to all military competitions between states armed with both conventional and nuclear weaponry, his book speaks to some of the problems that attend the proliferation of nuclear weapons in longstanding regional conflicts. Optimism that small and medium nuclear powers can easily achieve stable nuclear balances is, he believes, unwarranted. |
| ladder of escalation: Conflict Management and Industrial Relations G.B.J. Bomers, R.B. Peterson, 2013-06-29 This volume contains a selection of the most notable contributions delivered at the research conference Industrial Relations and Conflict Management: Different Ways of Managing Conflict, which was hosted by the Nether lands School of Business in July 1980. Held at Nijenrode Castle, the confer ence brought together an international gathering of thirty-five of the most distinguished scholars in these fields to present research papers and to en gage in round-table discussions. One of the principal aims of the conference was to explore cross-links and differences between the areas of conflict management and industrial relations in an international context. The book opens with a chapter by George Strauss, who provides an in troduction to and an overall view of the subject matter covered. The chap ters that follow in Part I deal with differing conflict conditions and defini tions and their implications for managing conflict. The manifestations of conflict and different modes of conflict management are the subject of the chapters in Part II. In Part III, three empirical studies of conflict are dis cussed. Part IV is concerned with comparative industrial relations, while value issues and conflict are the focus of Part V. Finally, in the Epilogue the participant feedback regarding the conference is reviewed. |
| ladder of escalation: Getting MAD Henry D. Sokolski, 2004 Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice is the first critical history of the intellectual roots and actual application of the strategic doctrine of nuclear mutual assured destruction or MAD. Written by the world's leading French, British, and American military policy planners and analysts, this volume examines how MAD and its emphasis on the military targeting of population centers influenced the operational plans of the major nuclear powers and states, such as Pakistan, India, and Israel. Given America's efforts to move away from MAD and the continued reliance on MAD thinking by smaller nations to help justify further nuclear proliferation, Getting MAD is a timely must read for anyone eager to understand our nuclear past and future. |
| ladder of escalation: Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator Amy Gahran, 2017-02-03 Love is not one-size-fits-all, yet often people assume that healthy, serious relationships all must follow the same basic path. The -Relationship Escalator- is society's bundle of customs for intimate relationships: monogamy, living together, marriage and more, ideally until death do you part. Beyond this, it might not be obvious what your options are. This book will help you: - Discover less common relationship options that might suit you. - Understand why and how people have unconventional relationships. - Empower you to negotiate about how your relationships work. - Overcome the fear that loving differently means you're doing it wrong. - Make the world a friendlier, safer place for more paths to love. Featuring real stories and insights from hundreds of people, -Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator- explores consensual nonmonogamy, love without living together, deep connections that pause and resume, and much more. The first in a series of research-based books, this introduction to relationship diversity is both accessible and surprising. LEARN MORE OR ORDER SIGNED COPIES: OffEscalator.com |
| ladder of escalation: Halo: Escalation Volume 1 Christopher Schlerf, 2014-10-21 Following the events of Halo 4, the UNSC Infinity is deployed to security detail for a peace summit between the Elites and Brutes. When the negotiations are ambushed by a mercenary fleet, Infinity is drawn into a plot which leads them to the discovery of a long-lost UNSC asset trapped behind enemy lines. This graphic novel collects the comics Halo: Escalation 1 through 6. Don't miss the thrilling new adventures set in the Halo universe! |
| ladder of escalation: On Theories of Victory, Red and Blue Brad Roberts, 2020-05-10 While the United States and its allies put their military focus on the post-9/11 challenges of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, Russia and China put their military focus onto the United States and the risks of regional wars that they came to believe they might have to fight against the United States. Their first priority was to put their intellectual houses in order-that is, to adapt military thought and strategic planning to the new problem. The result is a set of ideas about how to bring the United States and its allies to a culminating point where they choose to no longer run the costs and risks of continued war. This is the red theory of victory. Beginning in the second presidential term of Obama administration, the U.S. military focus began to shift, driven by rising Russian and Chinese military assertiveness and outspoken opposition to the regional security orders on their peripheries. But U.S. military thought has been slow to catch up. As a recent bipartisan congressional commission concluded, the U.S. intellectual house is dangerously out of order for this new strategic problem. There is no Blue theory of victory. Such a theory should explain how the United States and its allies can strip away the confidence of leaders in Moscow and Beijing (and Pyongyang) in their escalation calculus-that is, that they will judge the costs too high, the benefits to low, and the risks incalculable. To develop, improve, and implement the needed new concepts requires a broad campaign of activities by the United States and full partnership with its allies. |
| ladder of escalation: India and Nuclear Asia Yogesh Joshi, Frank O'Donnell, 2018-11-01 India's nuclear profile, doctrine, and practices have evolved rapidly since the country’s nuclear breakout in 1998. However, the outside world's understanding of India's doctrinal debates, forward-looking strategy, and technical developments are still two decades behind the present. India and Nuclear Asia will fill that gap in our knowledge by focusing on the post-1998 evolution of Indian nuclear thought, its arsenal, the triangular rivalry with Pakistan and China, and New Delhi's nonproliferation policy approaches. Yogesh Joshi and Frank O'Donnell show how India's nuclear trajectory has evolved in response to domestic, regional, and global drivers. The authors argue that emerging trends in all three states are elevating risks of regional inadvertent and accidental escalation. These include the forthcoming launch of naval nuclear forces within an environment of contested maritime boundaries; the growing employment of dual-use delivery vehicles; and the emerging preferences of all three states to employ missiles early in a conflict. These dangers are amplified by the near-absence of substantive nuclear dialogue between these states, and the growing ambiguity of regional strategic intentions. Based on primary-source research and interviews, this book will be important reading for scholars and students of nuclear deterrence and India's international relations, as well as for military, defense contractor, and policy audiences both within and outside South Asia. |
| ladder of escalation: Understanding Contemporary Strategy David J. Lonsdale, Thomas M. Kane, 2012-03-12 Understanding Contemporary Strategy provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of modern strategy. Covering all the main issues in the field, the book explores the major themes through a combination of classical and modern strategic theory, history and current practice. The book is split into three main sections: Definition and Context : including discussion of the human, technological, intelligence, ethical and grand-strategic dimensions Strategy in the Geographic Environments: land, sea, air and space Contemporary Strategic Challenges: terrorism, insurgency and nuclear strategy. Each chapter presents the reader with a succinct summary of the topic, but also provides a challenging analysis of current issues, supporting students with pedagogical features such as suggested further reading, boxed case studies and study questions. This book will be essential reading for upper-level students of strategic studies, war studies, military history and international security. |
| ladder of escalation: Incident Management for Operations Rob Schnepp, Ron Vidal, Chris Hawley, 2017-06-20 Are you satisfied with the way your company responds to IT incidents? How prepared is your response team to handle critical, time-sensitive events such as service disruptions and security breaches? IT professionals looking for effective response models have successfully adopted the Incident Management System (IMS) used by firefighters throughout the US. This practical book shows you how to apply the same response methodology to your own IT operation. You’ll learn how IMS best practices for leading people and managing time apply directly to IT incidents where the stakes are high and outcomes are uncertain. This book provides use cases of some of the largest (and smallest) IT operations teams in the world. There is a better way to respond. You just found it. Assess your IT incident response with the PROCESS programmatic evaluation tool Get an overview of the IMS all-hazard, all-risk framework Understand the responsibilities of the Incident Commander Form a unified command structure for events that affect multiple business units Systematically evaluate what broke and how the incident team responded |
| ladder of escalation: Hypercompetition Richard A. D'aveni, Robert E. Gunther, 1994-03-28 General Motors and IBM have been battered to their cores. Jack Welch, the chairman of General Electric, called the frenzied competition of the 1980's a white knuckle decade and said the 1990s would be worse. In this pathbreaking book that will define this new age of hypercompetition, Richard D'Aveni reveals how competitive moves and countermoves escalate with such ferocity today that the traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer be sustained. To compete in this dynamic environment, D'Aveni argues that a company must fundamentally shift its strategic focus. He constructs a brilliant operational model that shows how firms move up escalation ladders as advantage is continually created, eroded, destroyed, and recreated through strategic maneuvering in four arenas of competition. Using this Four Arena analysis, D'Aveni explains how competitors engage in a struggle for control by seeking leadership in the arenas of price and quality, timing and know-how, stronghold creation/invasion, and deep pockets. Winners set the pace in each of these four competitive battlegrounds. Using hundreds of detailed examples from hypercompetitive industries such as computers, software, automobiles, airlines, pharmaceuticals, toys and soft drinks, D'Avenie demonstrates how hypercompetitive firms succeed in dynamic markets by disrupting the status quo and creating a continuous series of temporary advantages. They seize the initiative, D'Aveni explains, by employing a set of strategies he calls the New 7-S's Superior Stakeholder Satisfaction, Strategic Soothsaying, Speed, Surprise, Shifting the Rules of Competition, Signaling Strategic Intent, and Simultaneous and Sequential Thrusts. Paradoxically, firms must destroy their competitive advantages to gain advantage, D'Aveni shows. Long-term success depends not on sustaining an advantage through a static, long-term strategy, but instead on formulating a dynamic strategy for the creating, destruction, and recreation of short-term advantages. America must embrace the new reality of hypercompetition, D'Aveni concludes in a compelling analysis of the potential chilling effect of American antitrust laws on competitiveness. This masterful book, essentially an operating manual of strategy and tactics for a new era, will be required reading for managers, planners, consultants, academics, and students of hypercompetitive industries. |
| ladder of escalation: Blood Rites Barbara Ehrenreich, 2020-01-07 A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book Original and illuminating. --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to become men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century total war. Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a killer instinct unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life. |
| ladder of escalation: The Third Option Loch K. Johnson, 2021-11-15 Loch Johnson's new book explores the subject of covert action, often referred to as a Third Option between America's use of diplomacy and warfare---a shadowy approach to international affairs based on the controversial use of secret propaganda, political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations (whether clandestine warfare or assassinations). The three major instruments that guide United States foreign policy are the Treaty Power, the War Power, and the Spy Power. Within the category of Spy Power is the Third Option the use of covert action. Ever since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the US has often turned to the third option in the conduct of its international relations. This controversial approach includes covert propaganda campaigns, subversive political activities, economic sabotage, and paramilitary operations ranging from clandestine warfare to the assassination of foreign leaders. From the beginning of the Cold War to the present day, America's intelligence and national security agencies have employed all of these third option tools in order to advance America's global interests. In The Third Option, the eminent national security scholar Loch Johnson provides a history of American covert warfare from 1947 to the present. In particular, he focuses on the morality and consequences of America's heavily veiled attempts to shape global affairs through its covert actions. Over the course of the book, a fundamental question comes into focus: Of what value has the Third Option been to the US as a complement to the nation's more open battlefield and diplomatic initiatives? Just as importantly, Johnson exposes the conflict between this controversial approach to achieving America's international objectives and the ideals that the US has always propounded: democracy, human rights, and liberalism. The Third Option closes with a sharp assessment of the policy, measuring its failures versus its successes. A richly detailed synthesis of America's covert action program ever since it became the world's preeminent power, this book serves as an ideal introduction for anyone interested in US foreign and national security policy. |
| ladder of escalation: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy L. Freedman, 2003-07-18 First published twenty years ago, Lawrence Freedman's Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, taking the story to contemporary arguments about missile defence. |
| ladder of escalation: Escalation and Negotiation in International Conflicts I. William Zartman, Guy Faure, Guy Olivier Faure, 2005-12-08 This volume examines the point where the concepts and practices of escalation and negotiation meet. |
| ladder of escalation: The Soviet View of U.S. Strategic Doctrine Jonathan Samuel Lockwood, 1983-01-01 Soviet perceptions of American strategic doctrine have influenced then-use of military power in foreign policy. An understanding of how those perceptions are being derived at and of their specific contents is therefore essential to any reflection on direction that American defense policy should take. Particularly in the field of arms control and disarmament, Soviet perceptions carry severe implications for U.S. proposals as well as general behavior. Lockwood bases his examination on Soviet sources such as newspapers, periodicals, radio broadcasts, and books. He establishes that Soviet analysts tend to project their own notions of clear strategy onto U.S. doctrine and intentions. Starting from the premise that the Soviets mean what they say Lockwood is able to give a historical account of Soviet perceptions starting from massive retaliation up to and including Presidential Directive 59. In his final chapter, the author gives possible policy strategies to successfully counteract the Soviet military policy. |
| ladder of escalation: The Ethics of Intelligence Ross W. Bellaby, 2014-06-05 This book starts from the proposition that the field of intelligence lacks any systematic ethical review, and then develops a framework based on the notion of harm and the establishment of Just Intelligence Principles. As the professional practice of intelligence collection adapts to the changing environment of the twenty-first century, many academic experts and intelligence professionals have called for a coherent ethical framework that outlines exactly when, by what means and to what ends intelligence is justified. Recent controversies, including reports of abuse at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, allegations of extraordinary rendition programmes and the ever-increasing pervasiveness of the ‘surveillance state’, have all raised concerns regarding the role of intelligence in society. As a result, there is increased debate regarding the question of whether or not intelligence collection can be carried out ethically. The Ethics of Intelligence tackles this question by creating an ethical framework specifically designed for intelligence that is capable of outlining under what circumstances, if any, different intelligence collection activities are ethically permissible. The book examines three of the main collection disciplines in the field of intelligence studies: imagery intelligence, signals intelligence and human intelligence. By applying the ethical framework established at the beginning of the book to these three important intelligence collection disciplines, it is possible to better understand the ethical framework while also demonstrating its real-life applicability. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, ethics, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR. |
| ladder of escalation: Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era Vipin Narang, 2014-05-25 The world is in a second nuclear age in which regional powers play an increasingly prominent role. These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states—and potential future ones—manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. Vipin Narang identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, he offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. Narang then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state's ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, he shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era considers the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security. |
| ladder of escalation: NL ARMS Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2020 Frans Osinga, Tim Sweijs, 2020-12-03 This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda. |
| ladder of escalation: Framing Compellent Strategies Gregory F. Treverton, 2000 The proximate targets of compellent campaigns are states or groups, but the ultimate targets are individuals. The challenge is to threaten or hold at risk what he or she cares most about. This is true for all war, perhaps all foreign policy, but it is especially true when the United States seeks to prevail without using force and without necessarily defeating the adversary. Focusing on three cases of compellence (the first of which began by the United States seeking to compel Saddam Hussein to desist from both regional and domestic aggression; the second, seeking to discourage India from testing nuclear weapons; the third, seeking to force Cedras to step down and the Haitian military to allow Aristide to return to power), the report outlines the important factors to consider in any compellent campaigns by questioning (1) who is to be compelled, (2) how important U.S. stakes are, (3) what threats and/or inducements are relevant, and (4) who is doing the compelling. |
| ladder of escalation: Art, Politics and Dissent Francis Frascina, 1999 Art, Politics and Dissent provides a counter history to conventional accounts of American art. Close historical examinations of particular events in Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s are interwoven with discussion of the location of these events, normally marginalized or overlooked, in the history of cultural politics in the United States during the postwar period. |
| ladder of escalation: Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance Richard K. Betts, 2010-12-01 In numerous crises after World War II—Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East—the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion. Rejecting standard explanations of our leader's logic in these cases, Betts suggests that U.S. presidents were neither consciously blufffing when they made nuclear threats, nor prepared to face the consequences if their threats failed. The author also challenges the myth that the 1950s was a golden age of low vulberability for the United Stateas and details how nuclear parity has, and has not, altered conditions that gave rise to nuclear blackmail in the past. |
| ladder of escalation: Getting to Yes Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton, 1991 Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement. |
| ladder of escalation: The 15 Fundamental Laws of De-escalation Brendan King, 2020 |
| ladder of escalation: The Second Nuclear Age Paul Bracken, 2012-11-13 A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to think about the unthinkable. The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics. |
| ladder of escalation: Back to the brink Tim Sweijs, Artur Ursanov, Rik Rutten, Stephan de Spiegeleire, Frank Bekkers, Scott Michael Ward, Willem Theo Oosterveld, Clarissa Skinner, 2016-03-10 |
| ladder of escalation: The Power to Coerce David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, 2016-02-25 Mounting costs, risks, and public misgivings of waging war are raising the importance of U.S. power to coerce (P2C). The best P2C options are financial sanctions, support for nonviolent political opposition to hostile regimes, and offensive cyber operations. The state against which coercion is most difficult and risky is China, which also happens to pose the strongest challenge to U.S. military options in a vital region. |
| ladder of escalation: Exploring the Role Nuclear Weapons Could Play in Deterring Russian Threats to the Baltic States Paul K. Davis, J. Michael Gilmore, David R. Frelinger, Edward Geist, Christopher K. Gilmore, Jenny Oberholtzer, Danielle C. Tarraf, 2019 This report examines what role nonstrategic nuclear weapons could play in deterring a Russian invasion of the Baltic states, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's current posture is weak. |
| ladder of escalation: 2034 Elliot Ackerman, Admiral James Stavridis, 2021-08-11 From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 - and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris Wedge Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic preeminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand. So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, coauthored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophitication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters - Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians - as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors' years of working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the readers a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid. -- |
| ladder of escalation: A State at Any Cost Tom Segev, 2019-08-27 The definitive biography of Israel's founder by one of Israel's most celebrated historians. As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel's independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. In this definitive biography, Tom Segev uses previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account that transcends the myths and legends that have built up around the man. He reveals Ben-Gurion's secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel's independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional eccentric moments – from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state 'at any cost' – at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation and reason. Segev's Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a contentious legacy, and one of the world's most intractable national conflicts. Praise for A State at Any Cost: 'A must for anybody interested in both the glorious and the dark pages of the history of Zionism and Israel, as reflected throughout the life and times of the Jewish State's most important founding father' SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER 'The story of a hard-headed, pragmatic and ruthless politician, told without sentimentality or nostalgia. It also serves as a key to understanding today's Israel, which is still very much Ben-Gurion's creation' THE TIMES 'Fascinating... A masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man... This is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power' THE ECONOMIST |
| ladder of escalation: Referral to Mediation Machteld Pel, 2008 This book provides valuable advice for sound conflict diagnosis and a professional mediation proposal, along with many practical hints and tips based on years of experience and research. Mediation in the right situations can resolve conflicts effectively. The facilitating role played by referrers is crucial. The art of referral deserves to be on the skills palette of professionals who deal with other people's conflicts in their everyday work, whether they are managers, lawyers, judges, or HR staff. They should all be able to identify opportunities for an effective mediation proposal. Research has shown that a decision to proceed to mediation is best taken in consultation with the parties to the conflict. The consultation should be preceded by a thorough diagnosis of the conflict, an investigation of the parties' interests in finding a solution by mutual agreement, and a review of the available options. |
Ladder Buying Guide - The Home Depot
May 14, 2025 · A telescoping ladder features a system that extends to full height when needed and retracts back into a compact form for storage. The best telescoping ladders can be used …
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HBTower Step Ladder, Folding Step Stool with Wide Anti-Slip Pedal, Sturdy Steel Ladder, Convenient Handrail, Lightweight, Portable Steel Step Stool
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Bauer’s agile manufacturing team enables quick delivery of standard or custom products, with orders often shipping in 2 or 3 days. The industry’s best packaging keeps freight damage low …
The 6 Best Ladders for Home Improvement, Tested by BHG
Feb 28, 2025 · We tested 23 different ladders in our lab, evaluating each option on its design, effectiveness, portability, and features. Then, we took our top performers home to test for six …
Ladder - Wikipedia
An extension ladder. A ladder is a vertical or inclined set of rungs or steps commonly used for climbing or descending. There are two types: rigid ladders that are self-supporting or that may …
Ladder, A Frame 4 Step Ladder Extension, 14 FT Anti-Slip ...
Buy LANBITOU Ladder, A Frame 4 Step Ladder Extension, 14 FT Anti-Slip Multi Position & Storage Folding Ladder, 330 lbs Security Load Telescoping Aluminum Ladders for Stairs …
Ladder Buying Guide - The Home Depot
May 14, 2025 · A telescoping ladder features a system that extends to full height when needed and retracts back into a compact form for storage. The best telescoping ladders can be used …
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Type and press the down arrow to browse search suggestions. Orders & Returns. Cart
Amazon.com: Step Ladders - Step Ladders / Ladders: Tools ...
HBTower Step Ladder, Folding Step Stool with Wide Anti-Slip Pedal, Sturdy Steel Ladder, Convenient Handrail, Lightweight, Portable Steel Step Stool
Bauer Corporation | American Made Ladders
Bauer’s agile manufacturing team enables quick delivery of standard or custom products, with orders often shipping in 2 or 3 days. The industry’s best packaging keeps freight damage low …
The 6 Best Ladders for Home Improvement, Tested by BHG
Feb 28, 2025 · We tested 23 different ladders in our lab, evaluating each option on its design, effectiveness, portability, and features. Then, we took our top performers home to test for six …
Ladder - Wikipedia
An extension ladder. A ladder is a vertical or inclined set of rungs or steps commonly used for climbing or descending. There are two types: rigid ladders that are self-supporting or that may …
Ladder, A Frame 4 Step Ladder Extension, 14 FT Anti-Slip ...
Buy LANBITOU Ladder, A Frame 4 Step Ladder Extension, 14 FT Anti-Slip Multi Position & Storage Folding Ladder, 330 lbs Security Load Telescoping Aluminum Ladders for Stairs …
