Escalation is an important consideration in U.S. military activities, but U.S. Army doctrine and manuals do not provide focused guidance on escalation risks across the competition-conflict spectrum. This report contains insights from four prominent academic schools of thought on the actions, attributes, and dilemmas that characterize escalation and provides staff officers a vocabulary to describe potential options.

A Vocabulary of Escalation

A Primer on the Escalation Literature for Military Planners

Andrew Radin, Alyssa Demus, Alexandra T. Evans

ResearchPublished Oct 17, 2024

Escalation is an important consideration in U.S. military activities, but U.S. Army and joint planning doctrine and manuals do not provide focused guidance on how to account for escalation risks across the competition-conflict spectrum. The academic literature on escalation does offer useful frameworks, and many of the concepts are applicable to concrete military problems at the tactical and operational levels. This report contains insights from four prominent academic schools of thought on the actions, attributes, and dilemmas that characterize escalation and deescalation processes and provides military planners and  staff officers a vocabulary to describe the benefits, costs, and risks of potential military options.

Key Findings

  • Academic theories of escalation offer ways to think about when, why, and how escalation may unfold.
  • These theories offer additional considerations for military officers to incorporate when they develop potential courses of action or advise on military options. However, the theories are often incomplete, are difficult to apply, and suggest contradictory implications for practitioners.
  • The literature on the offense-defense balance suggests that the challenges in distinguishing offensive and defensive capabilities may reduce the deterrent value of deploying offensive capabilities and lead an adversary to undertake undesired actions.
  • The literature on bargaining highlights the importance of the information and signaling. Costlier military actions that reveal a state's capability and commitment can help that state prevail without conflict, for example.
  • The literature on emerging domains highlights the new opportunities in such areas as cyber and space. However, because operational effects in these domains vary in scale, kind, and target, it may be difficult to calibrate proportionality or accurately convey intent. The resulting ambiguity can encourage escalation.
  • The literature on psychological, organizational, and bureaucratic politics highlights how decisionmakers can misjudge situations in predictable ways. When leaders and their staffs are aware of the common ways in which humans are apt to behave nonrationally, they are less likely to make poor decisions.
  • The lack of shared understanding about the operational consequences or political significance of emerging capabilities increases the risk that novel activities might lead to unintended escalation.

Recommendations

  • Staff officers should consider the offensive potential of U.S. forces, as well as the distinguishability of their capabilities. The more that planners use forces that are distinguishably offensive or difficult to distinguish, the greater the risk of eliciting undesired adversary actions.
  • U.S. planners should build intentional signals into military plans and strategy and determine whether there are any unrelated initiatives underway that might distort the intended message.
  • Staff officers should be attuned to the possibility that adversaries' responses may be based on their perceptions of U.S. capabilities and actions and that they may misinterpret or overlook the intended U.S. signal.
  • When preparing options employing novel or emerging capabilities, staff officers should account for an adversary's familiarity with the relevant domain and incorporate strategic messaging to clarify U.S. intent.
  • Staff officers should consider how innate biases, bureaucratic dynamics, or institutional norms are motivating their planning and decisionmaking and should frame decision options to maximize decisionmakers' rational consideration. Incentivizing consideration of dissenting perspectives may help challenge assumptions.

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Radin, Andrew, Alyssa Demus, and Alexandra T. Evans, A Vocabulary of Escalation: A Primer on the Escalation Literature for Military Planners. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1933-1.html.
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This research was prepared for the United States Army and conducted within the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program of RAND Arroyo Center.

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