On Escalation: Herman Kahn's Escalation Ladder
Are you ever interested on taxonomies? How about conflict taxonomies? Me too! One place to look is Herman Kahn's work:
Kahn's major contributions were the several strategies he developed during the Cold War to contemplate "the unthinkable," namely, nuclear warfare, by using applications of game theory.
In the 1960's, Kahn released two seminal works, On Thermonuclear War and On Escalation, which outlines Kahn's Escalation Ladder - 44 steps of escalating conflict up to total war.
Very interesting ideas - try to match up history and events using Kahn's taxonomy, and it is frightening how far up the ladder we go.
| Civilian Control Wars | 44. | Spasm or Insensate War |
| 43. | Some Other Kinds of Controlled General War | |
| 42. | Civilian Devestation Attack | |
| 41. | Augmented Disarming Attack | |
| 40. | Countervalue Salvo | |
| 39. | Slow Motion Counter City War | |
| (City Targeting Threashold) | ||
| Military Control Wars | 38. | Unmodified Counterforce Attack |
| 37. | Counterforce-with-Avoidance Attack | |
| 36. | Constrained Disarming Attack | |
| 35. | Constrained Force-Reduction Salvo | |
| 34. | Slow-Motion Counterforce War | |
| 33. | Slow-Motion Counter-"Property" War | |
| 32. | Formal Declaration of "General" War | |
| (Central War Threashold) | ||
| Exemplary Central Attacks | 31. | Reciprical Reprisals |
| 30. | Complete Evacuation (Approximately 95%) | |
| 29. | Exemplary Attacks on Population | |
| 28. | Exemplary Attacks against Property | |
| 27. | Exemplary Attack on Military | |
| 26. | Demonstration Attack on Zone of Interior | |
| (Central Sanctuary Threshold) | ||
| Bizarre Crises | 25. | Evacuation (Approximately 70%) |
| 24. | Unusual, Evocative, and Significant Countermeasures | |
| 23. | Local Nuclear War - Military | |
| 22. | Declaration of Limited Nuclear War | |
| Intense Crises | 21. | Local Nuclear War - Exemplary |
| (No Nuclear Use Threashold) | ||
| 20. | "Peaceful" World-Wide Embargo or Blockade | |
| 19. | "Justifiable" Counterforce Attack | |
| 18. | Spectacular Show or Demonstration of Force | |
| 17. | Limited Evacuation (Approximately 20%) | |
| 16. | Nuclear "Ultimatums" | |
| 15. | Barely Nuclear War | |
| 14. | Declatation of Limited Conventional War | |
| 13. | Large Compound Escalation | |
| 12. | Large Conventional War (or Actions) | |
| 11. | Super-Ready Status | |
| 10. | Provacative Breaking Off of Diplomatic Relations | |
| (Nuclear War is Unthinkable Threshold) | ||
| 9. | Dramatic Military Confrontations | |
| 8. | Harassing Acts of Violence | |
| Traditional Crises | 7. | "Legal" Harassment - Retorations |
| 6. | Signifigant Mobilization | |
| 5. | Show of Force | |
| 4. | Hardening of Positions - Confrontation of Wills | |
| (Don't Rock the Boat Threshold) | ||
| Subcrisi Maneuvering | 3. | Solemn and Formal Declarations |
| 2. | Political, Economic, and Diplomatic Gestures | |
| 1. | Ostensible Crisis |
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This is the permanent home of On Escalation: Herman Kahn's Escalation Ladder. I wrote this post at 23:41 on March 16, 2006. This post is part of grubbykid.com, a weblog. If you liked this entry, why don't you read some other posts such as AskMe Circles or Ansel Adams' Lost Los Angeles Photos? Or you could go to the site archives or return home. All are good choices.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: crisis cold war theory.
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Some descriptive tags for this entry are: cold, crisis, theory, war.
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