To study the strategy of conflict is to take the view that most conflict situations are essentially bargaining situations. They are situations in which the ability of one participant to gain his ends is dependent to an important degree on the choices or decisions that the other participant will make.

DEFINE: Establishes Schelling's core framework: conflict as a bargaining situation where outcomes depend on mutual decisions, not unilateral action.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 21