Arms and influence
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
viii, 293 pages 21 cm
9780300002218, 9780300008821, 0300002211, 0300008821
567721
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
The dialogue of competitive armament
"Written under the auspices of the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University."
"Delivered in part as the Henry L. Stimson lectures, Yale University."