Ladders of escalation are not new heuristics for analyzing foreign powers. The concept of escalation ladders dates back to Herman Kahn and Western analysts in the 1950s and 1960s. In these early models, the aim was to model US-Russian superpower relationships in light of new military technologies, particularly nuclear arms. However, Kahn’s original model, as it applied to warring superpowers, was too universalist and underestimated the role of uncertainty and imperfect information. This would lead to the development of, inter alia, alternative models of escalation, such as decision-making, operational needs, and statistical models. In this chapter, we outline the intellectual history of escalation modeling, beginning with Herman Kahn. As escalation models developed into the 1980s, focus shifted from superpower capabilities to questions of process, behavior, and perception. We categorize escalation modeling since the 1980s into four ideal types: decision-making models, operational needs models, de-escalation models, and statistical models. We then introduce our ladder of escalation model, informed by the key tenets of these models.