On Escalation

Kahn, H. (1965). On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. Routledge.

Type

Book

Intellectual base

Review or monograph

Year

1965

ISBN

9781351502207

Link

https://www.routledge.com/On-Escalation-Metaphors-and-Scenarios/Kahn/p/book/9781412811620

Cited by

4 citations across 4 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Escalation Dominance
  • In military and strategic studies, the Kahn-and-Schelling origin, escalation dominance is the canonical setting — nuclear escalation ladders, conventional-force escalation, signalling at each rung.

    This sourceOriginates the escalation-ladder framework (a definite ladder of rungs, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war) and the concept of escalation dominance — prevailing at successive rungs of a conflict's intensity. Publisher catalog confirms the work and its escalation-ladder structure (ToC: 'The Rungs of The Escalation Ladder', 'The Nuclear Threshold', 'De-escalation').

Domain-specific

• Chicken Game
  • Herman Kahn's classic vignette resolves the selection: a driver who conspicuously unbolts the steering wheel and throws it out the window has irreversibly removed the option to Swerve, forcing the rational opponent into the equilibrium where they yield

Mechanisms

• Escalation Ladder Exercise
  • The classic articulation of conflict as a ladder of rungs with distinct thresholds

    This sourceThe exercise borrows that structure to locate the rung where de-escalation stops being possible.

• Scenario and Wargame Review
  • It applies the discipline of red-teaming to the escalation ladder — the intensifying steps of a conflict laid out as explicit rungs, an analysis Herman Kahn pioneered

Verification

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