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.

托马斯·谢林（Thomas C. Schelling）在2005年与罗伯特·奥曼（Robert Aumann）分享了诺贝尔经济学奖。他是哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院的卢修斯·N.李奈特（Lucius N. Littauer）政治经济学教授。谢林1921年4月14日出生于美国加利福利亚洲。他于1944年获加州大学伯克利分校学士学位，1948年获哈佛大学经济学博士学位。1977年他获得了弗兰克·E.塞德曼（Frank E. Seidman）政治经济学杰出贡献奖。其代表作包括《冲突的战略》（1960）以及《微观动机与宏观行为》（1978）。与传统上大量运用数学的博弈论不一样，其主要研究领域被称为“非数理博弈”。

谢林重要的理论著作包括《冲突的战略》、《武器与影响》等，其中前者是相关领域中最具有开创性的理论著作之一。他的理论和思想不仅运用在经济学分析中，在外交，军事领域也深有影响。 2005年瑞典皇家科学院授予托马斯·谢林诺贝尔经济学奖，以表彰他在博弈论方面的开创性贡献。在瑞典皇家科学院颁奖的新闻稿中就特别提到了他的《冲突的战略》一书。毫无疑问，《冲突的战略》是谢林获得诺贝尔奖量重要的原因。