Arms and Influence.

In Arms and Influence, Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling argues that 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—real or imagined—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. Even the bombing of North Vietnam, Mr. Schelling points out, is as much coercive as tactical, aimed at decisions as much as bridges. "An exemplary text on the interplay of national purpose and military force" (Book Week). In 2005, Schelling shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”