ABSTRACT
The movement itself can be described in terms of a steady, unbroken growth or a series of discrete steps-the escalation ladder. The first serious academic analysis of the concept of escalation was published in 1977, long after the term had entered the vernacular. Bernard Brodie wrote the other important work with escalation in its title, but he was preoccupied in this book with making a point, elaborating a concept. Thomas Schelling is regularly classed with Kahn as one of the major theorists of escalation, and, as Smoke has shown, his ideas are critical to its development as a serious concept. Brodie, therefore, challenge the tragic concept of escalation, only the presumption of inevitability once the first nuclear shots had been fired, or indeed any shots. So, whereas the degree of concern over escalation was challenged, the concept itself was not contested. Kahn thus challenged the original concept of escalation by offering a new meaning.
