Military escalation occurs when states escalate a conflict to the maximum level of violence at which they are capable. Throughout history, escalation has been the result of a complex combination of factors that spread and intensified violence in a way that was difficult to control once it got underway. Exercise of restraint and the avoidance of unnecessary violence was a strategic imperative in the great power wars, but it proved impossible to achieve once hostilities began.
Escalation is a tool that can perform a variety of functions, from communicating stake and will to demonstrating capability. It is an essential component of deterrence, since it enables the state to inflict cost on its adversaries. Yet despite these important uses, escalation remains something of a black box. In the United States, an almost reflexive default position among national security professionals is to seek de-escalation.
The reason may be that current escalation theory lacks sufficient analytical clarity. Existing escalation analyses generally fail to consider the role of emerging technologies, and those that do tend to use a simplified coding scheme that places actions only according to their relative amplitude of violence rather than on the degree to which they are physically present and visible.
This siloed approach misses out on a valuable source of insight into the ways that states systematically and incrementally increase the intensity and geographic scope of conflict. To address these issues, I use original survey data from a cross-national sample of foreign policy experts to construct a more complete escalation ladder in which more physically present and visible actions fall on higher rungs. I also introduce a means-based framework to distinguish escalation by the type of force employed, rather than by its amplitude of violence.