Powerholders escalate through a structured chain of signals before carrying out sanctions

Evidence

To begin with, these temporal structures occur in the power-holder’s own sphere of action. First, he can sketch out the desired course of action both experimentally and without committing himself, knowing full well that he has power at his disposal. He can attempt to ascertain if this alone will suffice because of the other person knowing where power lies. If there is a show of resistance, he can become more definite, and implicitly or explicitly begin communicating about power, in other words, he can threaten. There are, at this point, different degrees of intensity. Ultimately he can decide whether, if all else fails, he wishes to carry out the sanction, i.e. to realize the avoidable alternative, or not. The unity of such a chain is laid down on the one hand by the system in which it occurs, and on the other by the power-code itself, that is by assessing whether potential is being maintained or has increased. It is thus not purely a matter of chance if one step follows another and if expressions of power are stepped up in the way described. In such a course of action, system and code function as complementary identities which define the possibility/impossibility of taking the subsequent steps. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 632

Categorization

• XREF: This escalation ladder from tacit knowing to threat to sanction parallels Stevens’s relentless self-discipline under Darlington — the butler’s deference is the ‘show of resistance’ never coming, so the power-holder never must threaten. — connects to: Sanctions push adversaries toward cloud capital and away from the Dark Deal — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 614; Genocidal escalations begin well before the genocidal regime takes power. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 131