Why We Fight

The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace

By: Christopher Blattman

Narrated by: Landon Woodson

A seasoned peacebuilder and acclaimed expert on violence explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms into war and how to interrupt that deadly process

It’s easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It’s also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen—and most of the time it doesn’t. Around the world, there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a fraction erupt into violence, a fact too many accounts overlook.

With a counterintuitive approach, Christopher Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. War is too costly to fight, so enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it for everyone or struggle over thin slices. In those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: What kept rivals from compromise?

Why We Fight draws on decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation.

From warring states to street gangs, ethnic groups and religious sects to political factions, there are common dynamics to heed and lessons to learn. Along the way, through Blattman’s time studying Medellín, Chicago, Sudan, England, and more, we learn from vainglorious monarchs, dictators, mobs, pilots, football hooligans, ancient peoples, and fanatics.

What of remedies that shift incentives away from violence and get parties back to dealmaking? Societies are surprisingly good at interrupting and ending violence when they want to—even gangs do it. Realistic and optimistic, this is a book that lends new meaning to the adage “Give peace a chance.”


* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of maps and pie charts from the book.

Deep question with deep answers

This book summarizes the political science and economics literatures on violence and warfare, and distills the origins of violence to five mechanisms: unchecked interests, intangible incentives, uncertainty, commitment problems, and misperceptions. My understanding is that though these ideas have been floating around academia for a while, they haven't been succinctly organized and presented to general audiences until now. Unchecked interests refers to the fact that often the leaders of groups do not pay the price of violence. Intangible incentives refers concepts like honor, vengeance, and glory that tilt towards violence for violence's sake. Uncertainty refers to classic results in game theory in which asymmetric information leads to Pareto dominated outcomes (i.e. wasteful outcomes in which everyone is worse off). Specifically, in most confrontations, potential combatants know roughly their own strength but do not know the strength of the opposition. In the absence of asymmetric information, the two parties should decide how to divide the surplus immediately, as violence is pure waste. But with asymmetric information, violence is the only way to call the other party's bluff. Commitment problems refers to situations in which one party cannot credibly commit to restraining their growing power (stop research on a nuclear weapon, stop growing their army, stop positioning forces in threatening places, etc.) and so the value of first strike goes up relative to delay. Finally, misperceptions refers to behavioral biases, especially overconfidence.

This enumeration is highly enlightening and adds much on one of the other best books in this area, "Better Angels of Our Nature" by Pinker. I have two criticisms. (1) I have heard Blattman on several podcasts. He's a good speaker and I would have preferred that he read his own book. (2) I don't like the journalistic-style of this book in which many anecdotes are used to introduce new ideas. Anecdotes are great as examples to illustrate points, but I often wasn't connecting the anecdotes to the points.

As a whole, I highly recommend to anyone interested in understanding violence.

An Essential Read for Negotiators & Entrepreneurs

I highly recommend this book regardless of your profession. Full of evidenced based research and the lived experience of the Author. He curates the political, social, behavioral and economic realities with facinating and unique idiological-free narrative.

Fascinating

Fascinating book on why humans engage and avoid wars. Wonderfully written, it combines clear explanations and great stories from around the world. I've recommended it to several friends already!

Argumentation of Ideas

The author keeps the listener engaged by a combination of stories of people, policies and regional events. The weaving of social research, histories and stories makes the authors framework palpable and perhaps even applicable for most people.

Useful beyond measure

This is beyond a shadow of a doubt one of THEE most useful books on solving problems, especially the solving of WICKED problems.

I love the fact that the author spent huge amounts of time on the African continent to do awesome primary research.

The timing of this book is also really great in affording us GREAT insights into the Russian Ukrainian war.