All Pain, No Gain - Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling's little-known role in the Vietnam War. By Fred Kaplan: "Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. Today's papers note his ingenious applications of 'game theory' to labor negotiations, business transactions, and arms-control agreements. But what they don't note—what is little-known in general—is the crucial role he played in formulating the strategies of 'controlled escalation' and 'punitive bombing' that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.

This dark side of Tom Schelling is also the dark side of social science—the brash assumption that neat theories not only reflect the real world but can change it as well, and in ways that can be precisely measured. And it's a legacy that can be detected all too clearly in our current imbroglio in Iraq."

(Via a DefenseTech.)