Robert Peters, Admiral Charles Richard, USN (Ret.)
In recent years, it has become nearly gospel that “escalation” during an acute crisis or conflict is inherently a bad thing. Indeed, “escalatory” has become a synonym for “bad” or “dangerous” or “undesirable.” As a result, many of our national security professionals and uniformed officers nearly reflexively dismiss taking actions or postures that could be considered “escalatory” or “provocative” in both real-world and simulated crisis or conflict.
These ideas and practice are flawed. Crises and conflicts, especially between great powers, are ultimately issues of stake and resolve, and become competitions in risk taking. In many cases, escalation, or the threat of escalation, is required or desirable to achieve the desired objectives. In fact, deterrence by cost imposition inherently requires the withheld threat of escalation and is not credible without a willingness to do so.
This paper is based upon our years of service within the Defense Department as (respectively) a senior military officer and a civilian. These views are offered with an eye towards re-examining the concept of escalation as a useful tool of statecraft.
Escalation Defined
Escalation, defined as an increase in the intensity of violence or the geographic or other scope of a conflict, is a tool. Escalating a conflict can perform a number of functions, from communicating stake and will to demonstrating capability, to outright winning the conflict. It is also a critical component of deterrence itself. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Keith Payne has written, deterrence, at its core, is the withheld threat of escalation.[1] Escalation or the threat of escalation can be accomplished with any instrument of national power.
On the Avoidance of Escalation
Escalation can make a conflict worse, if employed with an improper regard for potential adversary reactions. However, it can also end a conflict sooner by convincing adversaries that they have miscalculated and undervalued one’s stake and commitment and that one is therefore prepared to intensify the level of violence or expand the conflict geographically. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/escalation-tool-be-considered-not-dismissed