Creating risk can force concessions despite mutual harm.
Schelling's insight is that a threat too terrible to carry out can still work if you can credibly hand over partial control to chance. Deliberately going to the edge is the strategy; the risk is the instrument.
In practice
- A negotiator schedules the deadline for the day before a shareholder meeting, so that neither side fully controls whether talks collapse.
- A union announces a strike date it cannot easily cancel, which is what makes the threat worth answering.