Five Buckets Explain All War

All explanations for why rivals fail to find a peaceful bargain fall into five buckets: (1) uncertainty/imperfect information combined with incentives to bluff, (2) commitment problems such as preventive war when one side will be much stronger later, (3) unchecked leaders who don't internalize war's costs or have private incentives to fight, (4) intangible or 'stable' preferences like status, vengeance, or ideology that aren't in the material pie, and (5) misperceptions—persistently wrong beliefs about the other side.