P. Terrence Hopmann predicts that as the post-cold-war era progresses, the danger of virtually any military confrontation escalating to the nuclear level will make military action so risky and unattractive a means of international conflict resolution that it will be used only in the most desperate of situations. Instead, he looks to diplomacy as the increasingly prevalent method for resolving international conflict and contends that as diplomacy grows in importance, so will negotiation - diplomacy's central activity. In this comprehensive appraisal of the negotiation process, Hopmann synthesizes the vast body of literature on the subject and provides a framework for analyzing its many dimensions.