Rationalist Explanations for War

Authorship and Publication Information

• Author: James D. Fearon

• Source: International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 379-414

• Published by: The MIT Press

• Stable URL: JSTOR

• Download Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025

Introduction

• Central Puzzle: Wars are costly but continue to recur, prompting investigation into the reasons behind war despite its high costs.

• Types of Arguments:

  1. Irrationality: People or leaders may act irrationally, neglecting the costs of war.

  2. Separation of Costs and Benefits: Leaders may benefit from war while others, such as soldiers and citizens, bear its costs.

  3. Rationalist Explanations: Even rational leaders contemplating risks and costs of war might still decide to fight. This article focuses on this third category.

Rationalist Explanations Abundance

• Variety of Forms: Rationalist explanations are numerous in the international conflict literature.

• Pride of Place:

  • Historians and political scientists often conclude that war can be rational if leaders prioritize state interests, deeming expected war benefits to outweigh costs.

  • The term "rationalist explanations for war" may also be viewed through the lens of neorealism, which directly correlates to rationalist arguments about war causes.

Defining Rationalist Explanations

• Theoretical Foundations:

  • Attempts to frame a coherent understanding of rationalist explanations before testing them against alternatives.

  • Neorealism lacks a fully developed explanation for war based solely on rationalist justification.

  • Standard rationalist arguments may not satisfactorily explain the puzzle of how states can rationally avoid the costs of conflict while still opting for war.

Critique of Standard Rationalist Arguments

• Common Flaws:

  • Many existing rationalist arguments fail to address why leaders cannot reach pre-war agreements to avert conflict.

  • Five rationalist arguments are identified, yet only two—lack of information and commitment problems—adequately tackle this question.

  1. Anarchy

  2. Expected Benefits > Expected Costs

  3. Rational Preventive War

  4. Rational Miscalculation (Information Gap)

  5. Rational Miscalculation (Power Disagreement)

Explanation of the Five Rationalist Arguments

1. Anarchy:

   • Originating from Kenneth Waltz, argues that an anarchical international system enables conflicts due to the lack of a central authority.

   • Critique: Anarchy creates opportunities but does not explain why war occurs despite the costs associated.

2. Expected Benefits:

   • War is rational if the expected utility (benefits minus costs) exceeds the utility of peace.

   • Ubiquitous in literature, yet lacks clarity on how it correlates to negotiated settlements.

3. Rational Preventive War:

   • Declining states may attack rising powers preemptively to preserve advantages.

   • The argument often ignores potential for negotiated settlements.

4. Rational Miscalculation Due to Lack of Information:

   • Leaders can miscalculate relative strength or resolve due to incomplete information.

   • Still does not provide a clear mechanism for communication failures.

5. Rational Miscalculation or Disagreement about Relative Power:

   • A premise suggesting that inaccurate assessments of strength can lead to war, yet fails to justify how communication could clarify misunderstandings.

Two Mechanisms for Rationalist Explanations

1. Private Information and Incentives to Misrepresent

• Complexity of Private Information:

  • Leaders may possess undisclosed knowledge about their military capabilities and willingness to fight, which can skew negotiations.

  • Misrepresentation of military capabilities complicates bargaining.

• Game Theory Application:

  • Game models illustrate how war may stem from asymmetric information and strategic incentives to misinterpret.

2. Commitment Problems

• Inability to Commit:

  • States might desire to uphold negotiated settlements but can’t due to a lack of trust in each other's resolve and future actions.

• Empirical Illustrations:

  • Historical examples support that commitment issues often lead to war even when negotiated solutions exist.

Illustrative Historical Contexts

• Examples:

  • World War I: German leaders’ preventive concerns regarding Russian power accumulation.

  • Russo-Japanese War: Private information about military capabilities contributed to miscalculations.

  • 1939 Winter War: Finland's reluctance to cede territory to the Soviets due to commitments fears.

Concluding Remarks

• Conclusive Claims:

  • Rational states should logically find peaceful agreements preferable to war given fighting's inefficiency.

  • Mechanisms of private information and commitment underlie explanations for wars, contrasting with an assumption that rational deadlocks inevitably exist.

Appendix

• Mathematical Model Proving Claims:

  • Claims made throughout the text are mathematically assessed, emphasizing that rational expectations and mutual recognition of costs show that negotiated outcomes typically exist, providing academic insight into specific rationalist models for future research.

Key Definitions in Rationalist Explanations

• Private Information: Information known by one or more parties in a negotiation that is not known to other parties.

• Commitment Problem: A situation where one party must engage in actions that are fundamentally self-interested, potentially undermining established negotiations.