The disturbing new relevance of theories of nuclear deterrence

SIXTY YEARS ago, a dispute over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba pushed Washington and Moscow perilously close to all-out war. The crisis provided history’s most extreme example yet of nuclear brinkmanship, situations in which governments repeatedly escalate a very dangerous situation in an attempt to get their way. It also demonstrated the extraordinary value of the work of Thomas Schelling, an economist then at Harvard University, who used the relatively new tools of game theory to analyse the strategy of war. The war in Ukraine has made Schelling’s work, for which he shared the economics Nobel prize in 2005, more relevant than ever.