Competitive Risk-Taking, Calculated Ambiguity and Coercive Bargaining

Given that the nuclear warfighting school of thought prevailed over the U.S. military establishment by 1980, this section analyses three aspects entailed in this approach to seek security through dominating on all levels of conflict, nuclear and conventional: competitive risk-taking, calculated ambiguity, and coercive bargaining. We can understand that defence officers and security analysts do not like to concede that threats and manifestation of destruction have an upper bound beyond which they fail to be useful or meaningful. From that perspective, this concession would be anathema to the military’s chief function of prevailing in battle. Yet this unwillingness to confront the ultimate futility of ever-escalating rounds of destruction mirrors humans’ tendency to deny our mortality, despite its present certainty.