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Research Article

Escalation to conflict as an ongoing process: the case of July 1914

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Received 13 Sep 2022, Accepted 15 Dec 2023, Published online: 20 May 2024
 

ABSTRACT

The sequence leading to conflict, as specifically in July 1914, reveals the changes in each protagonist’s propensity to wage war. To characterize its timing, escalation is viewed as a viability (differential) game in progress under the protagonists’ actions. The chronicle of confrontations and accommodations allows for estimating a responsiveness structure at the heart of the game. As the moves, which are the controls, are observed, and not the state variables, the game reduces to the minimization of a viability criterion under dynamics. Early estimation of the responsiveness structure operationalizes the procedure for crisis management and provides a way to anticipate the consequences of possible moves in escalations to conflict. The application to July 1914 shows the strength of the method.

Acknowledgments

I thank Thomas Lindemann (Université Versailles-Saint-Quentin, France) for advising me Otte’s (2014) book.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data and material

published in the Appendix.

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