Understanding the potential sources of escalatory risk is an increasingly important priority for U.S. policymakers. If rivalries produce a series of crises or even proxy or limited conflicts, the danger of those confrontations escalating to higher levels of violence will be an ever-present concern for U.S. decisionmakers.

To support current planning, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and U.S. Army Pacific requested that the RAND Arroyo Center investigate potential sources of escalatory risk from U.S. policy actions and build a tool to assess such risks. This report summarizes that work and concludes with the components of the framework.

The analysis combines theoretical and historical research with a current assessment of Chinese and Russian views of escalation and a recognition of the way emerging technologies are changing the context for escalatory dynamics.

Escalatory pressures can be highly unpredictable and derive from many independent factors. The tool developed in this research can help decisionmakers think more broadly about such risks. However, an actual crisis or wartime situation will involve a complex and nonlinear interaction of these and other factors, including mistakes and accidents, that can be very difficult to control.