...Mr. Schelling's early work was on the most important issue of the Cold War: preventing it from becoming a Hot War. In his classic 1960 book "The Strategy of Conflict," Mr. Schelling, who had spent a year at the RAND Corporation, laid out some important applications of game theory to the issue of nuclear war. In one passage, he discussed the U.S.-Soviet conflict in terms anyone could relate to: a hypothetical duel. He wrote that "if both [duelists] were assured of living long enough to shoot back with unimpaired aim, there would be no advantage in jumping the gun and...