"Traditionally, Americans have viewed war as an alternative to diplomacy, and military strategy as the science of victory. Today, however, in our world of nuclear weapons, 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 capabilites - real or imagined - are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. He sees the steps taken by the US 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."
"In this landmark book, Nobel laureate Thomas C. Schelling considers the ways in which military capabilities, real or imagined, are used as bargaining power. This edition contains a new foreword by the author where he considers the book's relevance over forty years after its first publication. Included as an afterword is the text of Professor Schelling's Nobel acceptance speech in which he reflects upon the global taboo that has emerged against nuclear weapons since Hiroshima--Publisher's description."