Dangerous thresholds managing escalation in the 21st century
"Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition. When such competition entails military confrontation or war, the pressure to escalate can become intense due to the potential cost of losing contests of deadly force. Cold War-era thinking about escalation focused on the dynami...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Santa Monica, CA
RAND Project Air Force
2008, 2008
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| Series: | Rand Corporation monograph series
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| Online Access: | |
| Collection: | JSTOR Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | "Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition. When such competition entails military confrontation or war, the pressure to escalate can become intense due to the potential cost of losing contests of deadly force. Cold War-era thinking about escalation focused on the dynamics of bipolar, superpower confrontation and strategies to control it. Today's security environment, however, demands that the United States be prepared for a host of escalatory threats involving not only longstanding nuclear powers, but also new, lesser nuclear powers and irregular adversaries, such as insurgent groups and terrorists. This examination of escalation dynamics and approaches to escalation management draws on historical examples from World War I to the struggle against global jihad. It reveals that, to manage the risks of escalatory chain reactions in future conflicts, military and political leaders will need to understand and dampen the mechanisms of deliberate, accidental, and inadvertent escalation. Informing the analysis are the results of two modified Delphi exercises, which focused on a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan and a potential conflict between states and nonstate actors in the event of a collapse of Pakistan's government."--Jacket |
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| Item Description: | "MG-614-AF"--Page 4 of cover. - "Prepared for the United States Air Force.". - Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002 |
| Physical Description: | xxvii, 245 pages illustrations, maps |
| ISBN: | 1282033212 0833042130 9786612033216 6612033215 9780833042132 9781282033214 |