Abstract
The word ‘escalation’ has only been in common use for some thirty years, but it has become such a commonplace term that it is now employed to signify virtually any kind of rise or growth, be it in the intensity of an armed conflict or in more mundane items such as house prices. This dilution of the concept is regrettable, because the word initially arose as a particularly vivid descripion of how a conflict could increase in intensity through an inherent upward dynamic, much as passengers are carried upward on an escalator without any deliberate effort on their own part. However, the broadening of the concept reflects more than just sloppy usage; it stems also from the development of rival strategic theories suggesting that an antagonist may master and control the ‘escalation’ of a conflict to its own advantage.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Lawrence Freedman, ‘On the Tiger’s Back: The Development of the Concept of Escalation’ in Roman Kolkowicz (ed) The Logic of Nuclear Terror (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987).
See Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Praeger, 1965).
The post-Vietnam reflections of an early US theorist of limited war are found in Robert Osgood, Limited War Revisited (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979).
See Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 32–4.
On war termination see Fred Ikle, Every War Must End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
See Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).
See, for example, Desmond Ball, Can Nuclear War be Controlled?, Adelphi Paper 169 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981).
See George Quester, ‘Bargaining and Bombing during World War II in Europe’, World Politics, April 1963.
The misconceived nature of Saddam’s attempt to fight a brief, limited war against a revolutionary state is well brought out in Efraim Karsh, ‘Military Power and Foreign Policy Goals: The Iran-Iraq War Revisited’, International Affairs, vol. 64, no. 1 (Winter 1987/8) pp. 83–95.
Clausewitz’s attitude to limited and absolute war is a complex subject, a good short discussion of which is found in Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) ch. 4.
On the causes of the war see Efraim Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis, Adelphi Paper 220 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987) ch. I.
See Gerd Nonneman, Iraq, the Gulf States and the War (London: Itacha, 1986).
See W. Andrew Terrill, ‘Chemical Weapons in the Gulf War’, Strategic Review, Spring 1986, and The Independent, 23 July 1988.
A valiant attempt to resolve this theoretical dispute using the experience of past nuclear crises is Richard Betts’s book Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 1987).
See Anthony Tucker, ‘The Gulf Air War’, Armed Forces, June 1987.
A good discussion of the problems involved is Alexander George’s work The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971).
See Anthony Cordesman, The Iran-Iraq War and Western Security, 1984–87 (London: RUSI & Jane’s, 1987) pp. 46–53.
See Michael Handel, Perception, Deception and Surprise: The Case of the Yom Kippur War (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976).
See, for example, Tim Zimmerman, ‘The American Bombing of Libya: A Success for Coercive Diplomacy?’, Survival, May/June 1987
and Alex von Dornoch, ‘Iran’s Violent Diplomacy’, Survival, May/June 1988.
See Charles Kupchan, The Persian Gulf and the West, (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1989 The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv University
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sabin, P.A.G. (1989). Escalation in the Iran-Iraq War. In: Karsh, E. (eds) The Iran-Iraq War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20050-4_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20050-4_18
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-48686-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20050-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)