Escalation, Swarms and Drones

From Ukraine to SCOTUS to Wars of the Future

Lots in motion. Let’s dig in.

Kahn’s Escalation Ladder

How close are we to a nuclear war? One good way to measure this is the escalation ladder, devised by the late US strategist Herman Kahn. Herman believed that fears of using nuclear weapons had led to a decay in military innovation and that decay would lead to mistakes and miscalculations that ended in catastrophe. He built the escalation ladder to demonstrate it was possible to fight big wars, with or without nuclear weapons, in ways that didn’t end in a catastrophic global thermonuclear war.

Here’s Herman’s Ladder (below). It has 44 steps, twenty of which are before nuclear weapons are in play.

We’ve hit some of the upper steps already, from a conventional limited war (14) to Putin’s numerous “ultimatums” (16) to demonstrations of force (missile launches of nuclear-capable systems - 18). However, most importantly, we are now at step 20 and likely stuck there. Steps beyond 20 include the use of nuclear weapons.

20. “Peaceful” worldwide embargo or blockade.

Why is a peaceful embargo so escalatory? They are country killers that slowly strangle a country into submission (think of how brutal North Korea has become to survive it). In the modern, networked context, the pain of disconnection is likely even more acute. In short, global disconnection turns a limited war into a fight for existential survival (win or die).

So, Russia is slowly being strangled even with some limited connections still in place (gas sales to the EU and little trade with China). It’s, therefore, in a fight for survival that it must win.

This means that everything bit of escalation, from this point on, drives us closer to the use of nuclear weapons.

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NOTE: it’s important to point out that we are slightly less close to nuclear release than a week ago. Russia’s revised campaign has allowed them to gain some ground, which means that Russia isn’t facing a loss that would trigger the use of nukes. However, that may not last. The west has provided Ukraine with a bottomless supply system, replete with cutting-edge weapons (see drone discussion below) that will, if given time, wear Russian forces down and reverse the tide of battle.