‘What we want to see,’ David Cameron said last week, ‘is a de-escalation.’ Or, as the Tanaiste of Ireland put it: ‘If the Russian authorities do not de-escalate this crisis, the EU will take consequential action.’ In other words: make it less serious, or we’ll take it very seriously.
De-escalate sounds a nasty new word. It is indeed fairly new, first recorded in 1964. But in The Spectator for 14 September 1967, Douglas Skelton wrote from Washington: ‘A good case can be made for the thesis that the administration is seriously preparing to de-escalate the war.’ That was Vietnam. ‘Imagine the scene in the middle of next year, or even earlier,’ our correspondent continued: ‘no more bombing of North Vietnam, which pleases a number of people; the troops are starting, very slowly to be sure, to come home, which pleases everyone.’
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