On April 11 the Saltzman Institute held its Fifth Annual Kenneth N. Waltz Lecture in International Relations, featuring Dr. Robert Powell, Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Originally scheduled for late fall, the event was rescheduled due to hurricane Sandy. In his talk, entitled, “Nuclear Brinkmanship and Military Power,” Dr. Powell argued that scholarship to date has not paid sufficient attention to game-theoretic approaches to the study of nuclear brinkmanship. He provided a model in which every move in such cases is a trade-off between increasing the stakes to gain a better hand, and tempering one’s aggression to avert a full-blown conflict. Dr. Powell’s analysis and framework help to clarify important issues in nuclear deterrence theory and policy including coupling, escalation dominance, self-deterrence, and, more generally, the relationship between contests of military strength and contests of resolve.