What is the country doing? The principal thing the country is doing—in addition to damaging or humiliating Russia—is incurring a painful risk that both it and Russia (and the rest of the world) will be engaged in all-out war in the near future, a war that neither it nor Russia wants. The country is saying in effect, “If you do not get out of Hungary, we may cause an all-out war to occur.” By when must the Russians get out? The sooner they get out, the sooner the risk of war (from this cause) will be terminated or reduced. The country applying the pressure is not saying, “Get out or we shall deliberately start a war.” The decision is not up to them, and does not depend on their displaying the manifest resolution for a final act. The Russians may suppose that the country concerned will do everything it can to prevent total war; but they also have to recognize that with these things flying around, exploding now and then, and with themselves responding in whatever way they feel obliged to, it is not altogether clear that the country concerned, and the Russians, know how to keep total war from occurring.

QUESTION: How does this Cold War framing about the Hungarian crisis map to contemporary escalation dynamics? The mechanism of risk-creation as coercion is worth examining.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 444