Originally published more than fifty years ago, this landmark book explores the ways in which military capabilities--real or imagined--are used, skillfully or clumsily, as bargaining power. Anne-Marie Slaughter's new introduction to the work shows how Schelling's framework--conceived of in a time of superpowers and mutually assured destruction--still applies to our multipolar world, where wars are fought as much online as on the ground.

Thomas C. Schelling (1921-2016) was Distinguished University Professor, Department of Economics and School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. He was corecipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.