Abstract
‘Escalation’ has become one of the most influential of the family of concepts developed by the strategic studies community in the late 1950s and early 1960s.1 It has passed into everyday language to the extent that it is now almost impossible to discuss the course of any conflict, industrial or political as well as military, without some reference to escalation.
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Notes
For a full discussion of the concept, upon which this piece is based, see Lawrence Freedman, ‘On the Tiger’s Back: The Development of the Concept of Escalation’, in Roman Kolkowicz (ed.) The Logic of Nuclear Terror, London, Allen and Unwin, 1987.
Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 35.
See for example Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, New York, Harper, 1957.
The first use of ‘escalation’ in its contemporary context (at least according to the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary as well as author’s own research) was in 1959 by the English writer, Wayland Young, then an active proponent of nuclear disarmament. It came in a section arguing against strategies of limited nuclear war and ‘graduated deterrence’ based on small nuclear weapons. Young stated that: ‘the main argument against this policy is the danger of what strategists call escalation, the danger that the size of the weapons used would mount up and up in retaliation until civilization is destroyed as surely as it would have been by an initial exchange of thermonuclear weapons.’ Wayland Young, Strategy for Survival, Harmond-sworth, Penguin, 1959.
John Garnett, introduction to Theories of Peace and Security, London, Macmillan, 1970, p. 28.
Morton Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age, New York, Wiley, 1963.
See for example Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba, Adelphi Paper, no. 17, London, IISS, February 1965.
Herman Kahn, On Escalation, London, Pall Mall Press, 1965.
Testimony to US Senate Armed Services Committee, ‘Military Procurement Authorization: Fiscal Year 1964’, 10 February 1963. Reprinted in Henry Kissinger (ed.) Problems of National Strategy, New York, Praeger, 1965.
Robert Osgood, ‘Reappraisal of Limited War’ in Alistair Buchan (ed.) Problems of Modern Strategy, London, Chatto and Windus, 1970, p. 109.
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© 1990 Carl G. Jacobsen
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Freedman, L. (1990). Escalation/Limited War: The US View. In: Jacobsen, C.G. (eds) Strategic Power: USA/USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20574-5_13
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