I’m going to post TPM Reader DS’s note and follow up on the concept of “escalation dominance” and who exactly has the upper hand in Trump’s war on blue cities. I said in my earlier post that the White House thinks it has escalation dominance, the stronger hand at every stage of escalation. I think they’re wrong. The simple explanation is that they think this is a battle of force. It’s not. It’s ultimately a battle over public opinion. And it’s one they’re already losing. Escalating the contest of force will make them lose harder.
The concept of escalation dominance comes out of Cold War deterrence and strategic theory. DS shares some more thoughts on that. But one of the key things about these concepts, which emerged in the 1950s, is that they’re highly theoretical, in both senses of the word. The real world isn’t as linear or as predictable as you expect. There are various ways that weakness can be turned into strength. And, as DS notes, the point of escalation dominance is to keep the weaker party from escalating at all. It’s supposed to be a framework of deterrence for the stronger power.
