Thread by @CameronJJJ

A 🧵 on the Russian strategy of escalation through missile attacks, why its likely logic is wrong, and the possible consequences:

1/12

On Monday Putin addressed Russia's attacks on Ukrainian civilians & infrastructure.He:

1. Framed them (correctly or not) as punishment for Kerch & other alleged attacks
2. Promised future RU strikes would be "harsh" & "correspond to the level of threat posed" by new attacks 2/12

This is escalation ladder thinking. The "ladder" metaphor comes from Herman Kahn.

Russia has its own literature on escalation management, but it boils down to the same thing: inflict pain, promise more if the enemy does not submit, if they don't inflict more until they do. 3/12

The logic is immoral, horrifying, but simple. Its simplicity comes from its portrayal of states as unitary "rational" actors. States make a tradeoff between the gains of fighting on & costs of more damage. At some point the costs will outweigh the gains & they will submit. 4/12

But this logic is not just simple -- it is simplistic and therefore wrong. Because states are not unitary actors: they are complex political entities that do not behave in the same way a supposedly rational individual would. 5/12

If we treat states as political entities rather than unitary actors, then how is damage inflicted by an attacker supposed to translate into the targeted state's decision to submit? It's not entirely obvious -- maybe the public will demand that their leaders give in? 6/12

Before the Second World War, air power theorists, popular writers, and others speculated that large-scale strategic bombing would lead to a collapse in public morale and social order, forcing states to submit to the demands of the attacker in a relatively short time. 7/12

But this did not happen. As historian Richard Overy concludes in his book The Bombing War, attacks produced fear and panic, but "no European society collapsed under the impact of bombing." Social unrest was limited and other fears (such as invasion) were more salient. 8/12

To my knowledge, no large-scale bombing campaign has generated the kind of effects hypothesized in the interwar period. And despite subsequent attempts to revive such thinking, no state has achieved decisive political results through these tactics since. 9/12

So the logic of the escalation ladder/management is flawed, because once one stops treating states as unitary actors and instead the complex political entities that they are, then the mechanism by which increased violence translates into a decision to submit falls apart. 10/12

We see this in Ukraine today. The Zelensky government is not more willing to submit now than it was before Monday. If anything the bombardment has strengthened Ukrainian resolve to expel Russia completely and has reduced the room for a settlement short of that. 11/12

Like many before it, Russia is likely to expand its attacks on the reasoning that its theory of escalation is not wrong, but the necessary "rung" on the "ladder" has not been reached yet. That means that we need to expedite air and missile defenses to Ukraine ASAP. 12/12