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ABSTRACT
In this article, we develop the strategic rationale behind weak party escalation against stronger adversaries. There are, we suggest, four main strategies: to provoke a desired over-reaction from the stronger adversary; to compartmentalize conflict within a domain in which the weak party has advantages; to carve a niche with a stronger ally, and to forge a reputation of not yielding lightly. Spelling out these different logics contributes to the literature on small state strategies and escalation. It also suggests, contrary to much of the existing literature, that it can be rational for weak parties to escalate against great powers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Ragnhild Marie Hatton, Charles XII of Sweden (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson 1968).
2 T.V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994); Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3rd edn. (New York: The Free Press 1988).
3 John Herz, ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’, World Politics 2/2 (1950) 171–201.
4 Lawrence Freedman, ‘On the Tiger’s Back: The Development of the Concept of Escalation’, in Roman Kolkowicz (ed.), The Logic of Nuclear Terror (London: Allen & Unwin 1987), 109–52.
5 Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1966).
6 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1960); Bernard Brodie, Escalation and the Nuclear Option (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1966); Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1983).
7 David Lake and Donald Rotchild (eds.), The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1998); Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘The Escalation and De-escalation of Irregular War: Setting Out the Problem’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/5 (2012) 601–12.
8 Exceptions regarding terrorism and anti-terrorism include Duyvesteyn, ‘The Escalation and De-escalation of Irregular War’, 601–12, and regarding small state nuclear powers versus strong nuclear powers, Carmel Davis, ‘An Introduction to Nuclear Strategy and Small Nuclear Powers: Using North Korea as a Case’, Defence Studies 9/1 (2009) 93–117.
9 Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Praeger 1965).
10 Michael P. Fischerkeller, ‘David versus Goliath: Cultural Judgements in Asymmetric Wars’, Security Studies 7/4 (1998), 1–43.
11 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill 1979); Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: McGraw-Hill 1948); John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton 2001).
12 Richard K. Betts, ‘Should Strategic Studies Survive?’, World Politics 50/1 (1997), 12; James Gow, The Serbian Project and its Adversaries: A Strategy of War Crimes (London: Hurst 2003), 16–17; Benedict Wilkinson and James Gow (eds.), The Art of Creating Power: Freedman on Strategy (London: Hurst, 2017).
13 R. Harrison Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War’, American Journal of Political Science 44/3 (2000), 469–84; Robert Powell, ‘Bargaining Theory and International Conflict’, Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002), 1–30; Dan Reiter, ‘Exploring the Bargaining Model of War’, Perspectives on Politics 1/1 (2003), 27–43; Branislav Slantchev, Military Threats: The Costs of Coercion and Price for Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011); Mark Kilgour and Frank Zagare, ‘Explaining Limited Conflicts’, Conflict Management and Peace Science 24/1 (2007), 65–82.
14 Paul, The Strategy of Limited Retaliation (Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School 1959); Schelling, Arms and Influence.
15 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1976), 77. Mike Smith, ‘Escalation in Irregular War: Using Strategic Theory to Examine from First Principles’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/5 (2012), 613–38.
16 von Clausewitz, On War, 638–9.
17 Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2005).
18 Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977), 35.
19 Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts; Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005); Jan Angstrom, ‘Evaluating Rivalling Interpretations of Asymmetric War and Warfare’, in Karl-Erik Haug and Ole Jorgen Maao (eds.), Conceptualising Modern War (New York: Columbia University Press 2011); Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics 27/2 (1975), 175–200.
20 Ivan Arreguin-Toft, ‘How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict’, International Security, 26/1 (2001), 96.
21 J.F.C. Fuller, The Foundaitions of the Science of War (London: Hutchinson 1926).
22 Carl Henrik Meinander, ’Finland’, in David Stahel (ed), Joining Hitler’s Crusade: European nations and the invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
23 Randall L. Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning For Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In’, International Security 19/1 (1994), 72–107.
24 Franz A.J. Szabo, The Seven-Years War in Europe, 1756–1763 (London: Routledge 2008).
25 Jacob Børresen, Torskekrig!: Om forutsetninger og rammer for kyststatens bruk av makt (Oslo: Abstrakt 2011).
26 Rolf Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War in the High North (Aldershot: Palgrave 1991).
27 The literature on deterrence is vast. We follow a standard definition of deterrence as ‘the persuasion of one’s opponent that the costs and/or risks of a given course of action he might take outweigh its benefits’. Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 11.
28 Roger Knight, Britain against Napoleon: The organization of Victory (London: Penguin, 2014).
29 Brodie quoted in Freedman, ‘On the Tiger’s Back’, 125.
30 Ulrich Kühn, Preventing Escalation in the Baltics: A NATO Playbook (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2018).
31 Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013); P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014); Thomas Rid and Ben Buchanan, ‘Attributing Cyber Attacks’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/1 (2015), 4–37.
32 Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War.
33 Al J. Venter, Portugal’s Guerilla Wars in Africa (London: Helion, 2013).
34 John P. Cann, Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese way of war, 1961–1974 (London: Greenwood Press, 1997).
35 Allan Dafoe, Jonathan Renshon, and Paul Huth, ‘Reputation and Status as Motives for War’, Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014), 371–93; Allan Dafoe and Devin Caughey, ‘Honor and War: Southern US Presidents and the Effects of Concern for Reputation’, World Politics 68/2 (2016), 341–81.
36 Alex Weisiger, Logics of War: Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2013), 86–104.
37 James D. Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War’, International Organization 49/3 (1995), 379–414.
38 Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2007).
39 Glenn Snyder, ‘The security dilemma in alliance politics’, World Politics, 36/4 (1984), 461–95.
40 See, e.g., George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy; Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity Press 2004); Patrick Morgan ‘The State of Deterrence in International Politics Today’, Contemporary Security Policy 33/1 (2012), 85–107.
41 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security 19/3 (1995), 10.
42 James D. Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War’.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jan Angstrom
Jan Angstrom is Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm, Sweden. His research interests mainly cover issues related to the use of force. His latest book (with J.J. Widén) is Contemporary Military Theory: The Dynamics of War (Routledge, 2015).
Magnus Petersson
Magnus Petersson is Professor of Modern History and Head of Center for Transatlantic Studies at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo, Norway. His research interest is mainly connected to Nordic defence and security policy. His latest book is The US NATO Debate (Bloomsbury, 2015).