A3 Escalation to nuclear use

Topic

Crisis stability is the condition that keeps nuclear actors from actually using their weapons, even amidst a confrontation—a mechanism independent of the specific stage within any given track, whether it involves the resource regime, political authority, worldview, or kinship intensity. Crisis stability diminishes as the perceived first-strike advantage grows: the more an actor believes it can strike first and neutralize the other’s retaliatory capability, the less incentive it has to wait. Crisis stability also erodes as the likelihood of error or accident rises—that is, as the chance increases that a technical failure or misinterpretation might trigger a response that no one deliberately chose to initiate.

These two factors—perceived first-strike advantage and the probability of error or accident—do not operate in isolation; they combine, and that combination is exacerbated by time pressure, a situation where actors have minutes rather than days to make a decision. When the combination of perceived first-strike advantage and the probability of error or accident crosses a critical threshold under time pressure, crisis stability collapses abruptly rather than gradually.

The collapse of crisis stability is what triggers escalation to nuclear use: once crisis stability ceases to restrain the actors, escalation to nuclear use shifts from a remote scenario to the conflict's default trajectory. Monitoring crisis stability—and specifically how perceived first-strike advantage and the probability of error or accident interact under time pressure—is therefore the key to anticipating escalation to nuclear use before it occurs.

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