Escalation is a crucial concept for understanding how conflicts can grow into major confrontations, triggering unintended consequences in domestic and international policies. From the Vietnam War to the Cuban Missile Crisis, escalation can shape the outcome of military engagements as well as political and social movements. In the case of civil rights, a series of escalatory events pushed the U.S. to a point of no return, eventually resulting in significant legislative changes like the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It is important for national security professionals to understand how escalation can impact their nation’s stakes, limits, and objectives. Yet it seems as though many officers and civilians have been trained to view escalation in an exclusively negative light, creating problems for pre-conflict deterrence and conflict termination.
This may be a result of the Defense Department’s Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) system and a culture of risk aversion that permeates throughout the department. But it also could be a function of our nation’s decades long role as a status-quo power. Whatever the reason, it is time to re-examine the ideas and practice of military escalation.
Escalation refers to the increase in the intensity of violence or the geographic or other scope of a conflict, and it can perform a variety of important functions, from communicating stake and will to demonstrating capability. It is also a critical component of deterrence, which at its core requires the withheld threat of escalation.
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