Arms and Influence

Thomas C. Schelling

Published by Yale University Press 2008

Arms and Influence

Thomas C. Schelling

In the series The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300186703

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 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. He carries forward the analysis so brilliantly begun in his earlier The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (with Morton Halperin, 1961), and makes a significant contribution to the growing literature on modern war and diplomacy. Stimson Lectures.

Mr. Schelling is professor of economics at Harvard and acting director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs.

"An exemplary text on the interplay of national purpose and military force."—Book Week. "A grim but carefully reasoned and coldly analytical book. . . . One of the most frightening previews which this reviewer has ever seen of the roads that lie just ahead in warfare."—Los Angeles Times. "A brilliant and hardheaded book. It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in the stereotypes and moral attitudinizing."—New York Times Book Review.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	v
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. THE ART OF COMMITMENT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
3. THE MANIPULATION OF RISK Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
4. THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
5. THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
6. THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
7. THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	260
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages
- Main content: 303

eBook

Published: October 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780300186703