ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on misperceptions of intentions of potential adversaries; many other objects can be misperceived as well. Only rarely can statesmen be certain of a war's outcome, and once we take the probabilistic nature of judgments into consideration, it is even clearer that one can have wars without misperception. The most obvious way to determine the influence of misperception on war would be to employ the comparative method and contrast the effects of accurate and inaccurate perceptions. Misperception can lead to war not only through mistaken beliefs about the impact of the state's policy of commitment on others, but also through the impact of commitment on the state. Commitment can also create misperceptions. As the decision-maker comes to see his policy as necessary, he is likely to believe that the policy can succeed, even if definitive conclusion requires the distortion of information about what others will do.
