Arms and Influence

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. Later printing. Trade Paperback. Good. viii, [2], 293,[5] pages. Wraps. Footnotes. Index. Ink mark noted on page vii. Topics covered include the diplomacy of violence, the art of commitment, the manipulation of risk, the idiom of military action, the diplomacy of ultimate survival, the dynamics of mutual alarm, and the dialogue of competitive armament. This was written under the auspices of the Harvard Center for International Affairs. Part comes from the Henry L. Stimson Lectures at Yale University. Thomas Crombie Schelling (April 14, 1921 - December 13, 2016) was an American economist and professor of foreign policy, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control at the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, College Park. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with Robert Aumann) for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." Traditionally, Americans have viewed war as an alternative to diplomacy, and military strategy as the science of victory. Today military power is not so much exercised as threatened. It is, Mr. Schelling says, bargaining power, and the exploitation of this power, for good or evil, to preserve peace or to threaten war, is diplomacy--the diplomacy of violence. The author concentrates in this book on the way in which military capabilities are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. He sees the steps taken by the U.S. during the Berlin and Cuban crises as not merely preparations for engagement, but as signals to an enemy, with reports from the adversary's own military intelligence as our most important diplomatic communications. He carries forward the analysis so brilliantly begun in his earlier "The Strategy of Conflict" and "Strategy and Arms Control", and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on modern war and diplomacy. An exemplary text on the interplay of national purpose and military force."--"Book Week." "One of the most frightening previews which this reviewer has ever seen of the roads that lie just ahead in warfare."--"Los Angeles Times.