Tom Schelling Is Rolling Over In His Grave

The False Allure of Escalation Dominance

The False Allure of Escalation Dominance

Michael Fitzsimmons
November 16, 2017

“Anyone who thinks they can control escalation through the use of nuclear weapons is literally playing with fire. Escalation is escalation, and nuclear use would be the ultimate escalation.”

So warned then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work in his 2015 congressional testimony. Coming at a time of seemingly more prevalent nuclear saber-rattling, Work’s statement may appear to indicate a laudably cautious policy and a useful reminder to America’s rivals about the need for restraint in a crisis.

Yet the notion that nuclear escalation is a binary and prohibitively risky strategic choice belies decades of theorizing and planning for the possibility of limited nuclear war. Indeed, the prospect of limited nuclear escalation was central to NATO’s deterrence policy for much of the Cold War. Beginning in the 1960s, as Soviet nuclear forces approached parity with U.S. capabilities, policymakers increasingly sought to moderate the risks of mutually assured destruction with what came to be known as “limited nuclear options”: weapons and warfighting strategies that might include initiating nuclear use, but were designed to terminate conflict short of Armageddon.

One of the earliest and most influential concepts associated with these efforts was Herman Kahn’s “escalation ladder,” which defined 44 “rungs” on a metaphorical ladder of escalating conflict. The rungs ranged from “sub-crisis maneuvering” to civilization-destroying nuclear exchanges. In between were two dozen distinct levels of escalation beyond the threshold of nuclear use, including such “limited” attacks as non-lethal demonstrative detonations, tactical strikes on military forces, and small-scale attacks on civilians.

In this context, Kahn also introduced the term “escalation dominance,” which became shorthand for one school of thought in deterrence and nuclear strategy. The idea posits the ability of a state to maintain such a markedly superior position over a rival, across a range of escalation rungs, that its rival will always see further escalation as a losing bet. Such dominance, the thinking goes, serves as the most effective possible deterrent to conflict, as well as the most reliable means for managing escalation if deterrence fails. As Colin Gray and Keith Payne put it in their famous “Victory is Possible” article in 1980, “an adequate U.S. deterrent posture is one that denies the Soviet Union any plausible hope of success at any level of strategic conflict.” Beyond U.S.-Soviet competition, analysts have continued to apply the concept to such contemporary strategic challenges as the India-Pakistan rivalry, a potential Taiwan Strait crisis, and even Middle Eastern terrorism.

Is escalation dominance still relevant to U.S. strategy today? A debate on this question may soon be revived. In the next few months, the Trump administration will publish the results of its Nuclear Posture Review, the first comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear strategy and capabilities since 2010. Among the topics most worth watching is whether and how the review addresses U.S. strategy for managing escalation. Perhaps even more than the Obama administration’s team in 2010, the current Nuclear Posture Review authors must confront a growing risk of escalation from limited regional conflicts to nuclear war. Tensions with North Korea may pose the most obvious of such risks at the moment, but unfortunately, the problem is broader and more deeply rooted. Two related factors account for this growing risk.

First, the erosion of U.S. conventional superiority — especially with the growing sophistication of “anti-access / area denial” capabilities — means adversaries may be increasingly tempted to engage in quick, limited, territorial aggression — a fait accompli — against a U.S. ally. For China, this could be over contested islands in the South or East China Seas or over Taiwan. For Russia, it could be anywhere in its “near abroad,” even against the Baltic NATO allies. On the Korean Peninsula, U.S. conventional superiority remains intact, but major gains in North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities could serve as a shield for a number of different limited provocations against South Korea.

However, even where U.S. power projection advantages over regional challengers may be strained, they are still sufficiently robust to potentially foil or reverse an attack. So the result of this evolution in conventional military balances is a set of increasingly plausible scenarios in which a nuclear-armed power launches a limited attack on its neighbor, only to find itself on the verge of conventional defeat at the hands of the United States.

The second risk driver is the presence, in precisely these limited-war scenarios, of asymmetric interests between the United States and its potential adversaries…
 
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