Escalation Ladder
Herman Kahn's framework (developed in the early 1960s, most fully in his 1965 book On Escalation) treating crisis escalation as a long sequence of discrete, identifiable rungs — from ordinary diplomatic pressure through conventional measures to nuclear signaling and general war — rather than a single leap from peace to nuclear war. Each rung carries its own signaling function and a distinct opportunity to pause, negotiate, or step back before the next. Applied to autumn 2022 nuclear signaling around the Ukraine war, the crisis climbed several real rungs without reaching the ladder's actual nuclear-use rungs.