Search on Ifri.org

Frequent searches

Suggestions

Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia

Studies
|
Date de publication
|
Référence taxonomie collections
Proliferation Papers
Image de couverture de la publication
Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia
Accroche

"Escalation", the tendency of belligerents to increase the force or breadth of their attacks to gain advantage or avoid defeat, is not a new phenomenon. Systematic thought about how to manage it, however, did not crystallize until the Cold War and the invention of nuclear weapons. 

Corps analyses

Given the limitations identified in these Cold War approaches to escalation and the profound changes that have affected the strategic environment, a new framework for thinking and managing escalation against nuclear adversaries is needed. It should lead to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of escalation: its dynamics, forms, and the motives that drive it. This paper attempts to fill a gap in the current strategic literature, and explores the challenges that NATO would face in managing escalation in a military conflict with a major nuclear power such as the Russian Federation. Escalation management is about keeping wars limited. In a war against Russia, Western leaders would need to weigh their interests in the issue at stake and adjust their war aims and efforts accordingly. They could secure success only if it is defined and pursued in ways that ultimately allow for compromise and do not threaten the survival of the Russian state or its leaders.

 

Download the full analysis

This page contains only a summary of our work. If you would like to have access to all the information from our research on the subject, you can download the full version in PDF format.

Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia

Decoration
Author(s)
Image principale
 A soldier watching a sunset on an armored infantry fighting vehicle
Security Studies Center
Accroche centre

Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.

Image principale

Design, Destroy, Dominate. The Mass Drone Warfare as a Potential Military Revolution

Date de publication
18 June 2025
Accroche

The widespread use of drones observed in Ukraine—both in terms of the scale of the fleets deployed and their omnipresence in the operations of both belligerents—appears to meet the conditions of a genuine military revolution.

Vincent TOURRET
Image principale

The Hunt for Economic Security: The Role of Navies in Deterring Threats to the Maritime Economy

Date de publication
10 June 2025
Accroche

The maritime domain is currently faced with a wide variety of threats, such as climate change, economic warfare, shadow fleet operations, protection of critical infrastructures, and illicit activities ranging from illegal fishing to piracy. Navies suffer from inherent limitations when deterring threats to the global maritime economy: their global presence and permanence limits their credibility in terms of deterrence, their focus usually set on immediate deterrence, implementing deterrence by punishment in and from the naval domain is difficult and costly.

Olivier SCHMITT Louise TUMCHEWICS
Image principale

A Fragile Consensus? The Pressure on the Norm Against Nuclear Testing

Date de publication
22 April 2025
Accroche

Apart from North Korea, no state has conducted explosive nuclear tests in the 21st century, reflecting the emergence of a strong international norm against such testing.

Doreen HORSCHIG
Image principale

The Franco-German Brigade and the Revival of European Defense

Date de publication
08 April 2025
Accroche

One thing has been clear since Donald Trump's return to the White House: the very existence of the European unification project is threatened. Unless it develops a sovereign defense policy to counter the war in Ukraine and the weakening of American security guarantees, the European Union will continue to see its internal cohesion and external attractiveness wane.

Jacob ROSS Nicolas TÉTERCHEN

How can this study be cited?

Image de couverture de la publication
Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia
Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia, from Ifri by
Copy
Image de couverture de la publication
Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia

Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia