The New Calculus of Escalation

"Martin Libicki updates our understanding of conflict escalation dynamics for the twenty-first century in order to reduce the possibility of major war. The return of great power competition has renewed concerns about managing escalation, lest a minor crisis inadvertently spiral into nuclear war. During the Cold War, there were two critical thresholds, the threshold between peace and war and the threshold between conventional war and nuclear war. But ongoing developments in cyber and other advanced military technologies threaten command and control and blur the old thresholds. Previous strategists spoke of escalation ladders, but today's mixing of conventional, nuclear, and cyber weapons makes escalation more like a complex lattice of crisscrossing domains. This book seeks to improve mutual understanding among states by reconceptualizing conflict thresholds and exit ramps the manage escalation"--