Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT)

Graduated reciprocation in tension reduction (GRIT) is a behavioral strategy designed to reduce hostilities among conflicting parties. It is a unilateral strategy under which the adopter initiates a system of conciliation and reciprocation and at the same time signals a willingness to cease the process if the other party attempts to exploit the goodwill. GRIT is applicable to both intergroup and intragroup conflict.

GRIT was proposed in 1959 by Charles Osgood in response to the escalation of the Cold War and the wave of strategic models being advocated, all of which took, in Osgood's view, untenable perspectives on U.S.–USSR relations. Military strategists advocated a preventive or preemptive first strike (“getting it all over with in an angry burst of hell-fire,” in Osgood's words). Pacifists argued for unilateral disarmament by the United States, on the assumption that the USSR would not attack a defenseless country and would eventually follow suit (“passively hoping for the best from an aggressive opponent as we lay down our arms”). Think-tank experts advocated a buildup of far more nuclear weapons than would ever be needed and simultaneous recognition of the impossibility of completely shielding the country from nuclear attack. Their logic was that such a strategy would both convince the USSR of the United States's ability to annihilate them and produce extreme reluctance within the United States to actually launch such an attack, because a counterattack could not be completely defended (“erect[ing] stabilized deterrence on the shifting sands of human fallibility”). Negotiated disarmament was also advocated in some quarters, though Osgood believed any such negotiations were doomed by biased perceptions, distrust, self-fulfilling prophecy, and inflexibility.

The catalyzing event for Osgood, however, was a debate between the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Sidney Hook over whether it was preferable to live under communism or be killed in a nuclear war (Russell preferred the former, Hook the latter). This convinced Osgood that people were viewing the conflict as a conquer-or-be-conquered situation, and he refused to believe that only two outcomes were possible. GRIT was his response.