What Iran teaches us about why wars start

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Indicator from Planet Money
Episode Title: What Iran teaches us about why wars start
Date: June 30, 2026
Host: NPR (Waylon Wong & Darian Woods)
Key Guest: Chris Blattman, Economist and Political Scientist, University of Chicago

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Waylon Wong and Darian Woods explore the underlying reasons why wars start—focusing on recent conflict between the US and Iran as a case study. Drawing on insights from economist and political scientist Chris Blattman, the discussion digs into why, despite the high costs and devastating consequences, nations sometimes choose violence, and why long, drawn-out wars are the exception rather than the rule.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. War Is Often Short—But Costly

• Historical Patterns

  • Most wars in the past 200 years last less than two months ([00:47]).
  • The recent Iran conflict mirrors this average duration.
  • Notable exceptions: World Wars, Ukraine, and Gaza ([01:03]).

• Economic and Human Costs

  • The US-Iran war has cost over $132 billion, averaging $490 per US adult, along with significant loss of life ([03:31]).
  • Quote:

    "War is actually—there are no winners, right? There's always a better solution ... Most of the time that's not true." — Chris Blattman ([03:18])

2. Why Wars Break Out

Chris Blattman identifies five main drivers that lead to war, applying both economic reasoning and psychological dimensions:

A. Lacking Incentives to Avoid War

• Sometimes leaders, especially autocrats, do not bear the costs of war themselves, leading to incentives misaligned with the nation’s welfare.
  • Quote:

    "Putin wasn't paying the costs of this war directly. This is true of many leaders, even democratic ones, but it's especially true of autocrats." — Chris Blattman ([05:49])

  • Example: The Trump family's possible financial stake in drone manufacturing ([05:58]).

B. Intangible Incentives

• Especially powerful are non-material motives: ideology, nationalism, revenge, and honor.
  • Quote:

    "Values and ideals, things that only war can deliver. The extermination of an ideology or an ethnic group that you loathe...for lack of a better label, I think of these as sort of intangible incentives." — Chris Blattman ([06:13])

C. Uncertainty

• Lack of information or misjudgment about other countries’ capabilities or intentions can lead to escalation.
  • Quote:

    "Amidst this uncertainty, how strong is Iran? How strong is Ukraine?...All of these things just have tremendous uncertainty." — Chris Blattman ([06:55])

  • Illustrated as a high-stakes game of poker where countries might bluff or misinterpret strength ([07:11]).

D. Commitment Problems

• When a rising power threatens an established power, conflict may occur if there’s no trust that future promises will be kept.
  • Example: The Thucydides Trap, where established powers might go to war to prevent being overtaken by rivals.
  • Quotes:

    "The classic commitment problem is this idea of a rising power facing a weakening one...you have a choice. Am I going to take you out now and prevent your rise and maintain my dominance, or do I wait until the day when you might dominate me?" — Chris Blattman ([07:52]) "Every single time Xi Jinping talks to foreign journalists, or for that matter, a US President, he brings up the Thucydides trap...it's fundamentally scary and dangerous if Xi Jinping thinks that war is inevitable between rising powers." — Chris Blattman ([08:50])

E. Misperception

• Wars can start when leaders act on overconfidence or faulty intelligence.
  • Quote:

    "Most people say that Putin was overconfident. They say that he was overconfident either because of his psychological bias or because he was getting bad information...people weren't pushing the real truth up the chain." — Chris Blattman ([09:26])

  • Example: Russia’s miscalculation about Ukraine’s resolve and capacity ([09:41]).

3. The Rarity and Prevention of War

• The norm is sustained peace, not conflict, even between hostile states.
• Long, protracted wars like Ukraine and Gaza are the exceptions.
• Quote:

  "War is really the exception because they're just so horrendously costly." — Chris Blattman ([04:03])

4. Optimism in the Data

• Despite gloomy news, the high cost of war serves as a deterrent. Many potential conflicts end swiftly or are avoided altogether.
  • Example: The short US intervention in Liberia ending a civil war in days ([09:58]).

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Accidental Warzone Romance:

  "I met a humanitarian worker who was working in a war in northern Uganda, and so I followed her there ... We're about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary." — Chris Blattman ([02:37])

• Political Leaders and War Profiteering:

  "President Trump's sons, for example, own part of a drone manufacturing company. They might profit from war, even if it's costly for the country." — Waylon Wong ([05:58])

• Classics in Political Science:

  "The Thucydides trap." — Multiple speakers ([08:33-08:37])

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30–03:03 | Chris Blattman’s background and accidental entry into war research | | 03:12–04:52 | Why war is rarely truly "worth it" economically or for society | | 05:29–09:17 | The five core reasons nations go to war: incentives, intangibles, uncertainty, commitment problems, and misperception | | 09:58 | Example of a short, successful conflict (Liberia, 2003) |

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Tone

• The discussion is candid, analytical, and leavened with moments of dry wit.
• Complex topics are unpacked accessibly, with both severity and a glimmer of hope that wars are mostly avoided.

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Takeaway:
Despite the horrors and costs of war, it remains a rare outcome. By understanding the incentives and missteps that lead nations into conflict, policymakers and the public can better appreciate both the risks and the ways to avoid unnecessary violence—even in times of high tension.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution):

• "War is actually—there are no winners, right? There's always a better solution." — Chris Blattman (03:18)
• "Putin wasn't paying the costs of this war directly." — Chris Blattman (05:49)
• "Values and ideals, things that only war can deliver...intangible incentives." — Chris Blattman (06:13)
• "The Thucydides Trap." — Chris Blattman (08:36)

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For listeners wanting more:

• Chris Blattman’s research delves deeper into the economic and social roots of conflict [Refer to University of Chicago faculty page].
• Look up previous Indicator episodes for further context on specific conflicts or related economic history.

Transcript

[Chris Blattman]

Npr.

[Darian Woods]

Yesterday, President Trump claimed that the US and Iran are going to talk in Doha as officials try to patch up a ceasefire agreement that was broken by strikes over the last week.

[Waylon Wong]

So in this liminal moment, we thought it would be a good time to look back and ask, how did we get into this?

[Darian Woods]

Chris Splatman is an economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies the roots of war and conflict.

[Chris Blattman]

Once you start thinking about conflict and violence, you can't stop thinking about anything else.

[Waylon Wong]

Chris's obsession with war and the data on conflicts revealed something to him. He says the several weeks of intense fighting between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other is actually kind of typical.

[Chris Blattman]

I think the average war in the last 200 years has been less than two months long. And so this fits that pattern.

[Darian Woods]

We don't know what will happen next, but if the fighting stays at the current lower simmer, then the Iran war's hot stage matched average historical lengths.

[Waylon Wong]

The two world wars do not fit that pattern. Neither does the war in Ukraine or Gaza. This is the indicator. From Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.

[Darian Woods]

And I'm Darian Woods. Today on the show why We Fight, we speak to an economist about the incentives that push countries to war. We ask, if violence is so costly, why do some wars keep stretching on and on?

[NPR Announcer]

Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hello. Hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with Alon Cohen, who leads research and development at ufc, to discuss the complexity of using technology to analyze fight data.

[Alon Cohen]

Data with kick to the head, it makes contact with the outside of my arm, which I brought up. In our world, that's. That's a blocked strike. Yeah, but teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how, like when my arm is up, that's a block. When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not. It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That is, until IBM entered the octagon.

[NPR Announcer]

Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts.

[Darian Woods]

Chris Blightman got into studying war by accident when he was studying industrialization in East Africa.

[Chris Blattman]

And then I met a humanitarian worker who was working in a war in northern Uganda, and so I followed her there.

[Darian Woods]

So followed somebody into a war zone?

[Chris Blattman]

Well, I will say that led to a dissertation together that led to several papers together. We're about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary and we have a 13 year old boy and a 15 year old girl. So it was a pretty successful strategy.

[Waylon Wong]

Chris and his wife Jeannie Anand have now published papers about reintegrating child soldiers and how cash and training can help women in war affected areas.

[Darian Woods]

And what Chris research reveals is something that a lot of us intuitively know.

[Chris Blattman]

War is actually there are no winners, right? There's always a better solution. There are circumstances where victory and some amount of luck makes you better off after the fact. Most of the time that's not true.

[Waylon Wong]

According to Moody's, this year's war with Iran has cost the US at least $132 billion. That's about $490 for every adult in America. That's counting the military spending plus broader economic fallout like the spikes in gasoline prices. It's also resulted in the deaths U.S. service members, more than 3,400 Iranians and dozens elsewhere in the Middle East.

[Darian Woods]

So if war is usually economically bad for both parties, the big question is why do countries fight?

[Chris Blattman]

I mean, it's important to remember most of the time they don't. Right. So north and South Korea have been in a formal state of war for decades and there is intermittent small bouts of violence which I would call skirmishes, but generally they have not fought at any scale. Iran and the United States have essentially been in a state of war for decades as well. And again, this erupts into short lived, sometimes hours or days long skirmishes, or as we've seen in recent times, five to six weeks of violence. But that's five to six weeks of violence out of 45, 50 years of hostilities. And so not to diminish what's going on, but war is really the exception because they're just so horrendously costly.

[Darian Woods]

Chris is reluctant to make too many statements on the war in Iran. You know, we're still in the middle of it, who knows what's going to happen. But the broader point he's making is that groups disliking each other is typical. Groups loathing each other is typical too. But all out conflict that lasts longer than a brief flare up is rare.

[Waylon Wong]

So that raises a what went wrong in wars like Ukraine and Gaza? Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine took place over four years ago and heavy fighting continues. Israel and Hamas were in a hot war for two years and are now, on paper at least, in an uneasy ceasefire.

[Chris Blattman]

If we start from the idea that wars are horrendously costly, then There has to be something that gives one side or the other an incentive, however temporary, to decide to turn to violence.

[Darian Woods]

Chris says the first reason is when leaders don't have the incentives to work in the best interests of their country. Take Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[Chris Blattman]

Putin wasn't paying the costs of this war directly. This is true of many leaders, even democratic ones, but it's especially true of autocrats.

[Waylon Wong]

Democracies like the US Aren't immune. President Trump's sons, for example, own part of a drone manufacturing company. They might profit from war, even if it's costly for the country.

[Darian Woods]

The second explanation Chris has for violence is something a little more psychological.

[Chris Blattman]

Values and ideals, things that only war can deliver. The extermination of an ideology or an ethnic group that you loathe. The idea you hold for your ethnic group or your nationalist ideal or the place you want in history and vengeance is another very powerful example. They're not irrational. They're just enduring preferences. And for lack of a better label, I think of these as sort of intangible incentives.

[Waylon Wong]

These incentives are intangible because if you're motivated by, say, a belief that a war will secure your place in the afterlife, that's not a material reward.

[Darian Woods]

Reason number three, Chris says, is uncertainty.

[Chris Blattman]

Amidst this uncertainty, how strong is Iran? How strong is Ukraine? How powerful are my forces? How likely is a decapitation event likely to create regime change? All of these things just have tremendous uncertainty.

[Waylon Wong]

Chris says you can think of countries as playing a game of poker. Sometimes they're bluffing and pretending to be stronger than they are. Sometimes they're not. But it can be really hard to tell the difference. And when countries misjudge others, that's when long wars can start.

[Darian Woods]

The Trump administration said the war in Iran would be just a, quote, short excursion. That's proven not to be the case.

[Chris Blattman]

To see the United States bomb Iran after years of trying everything else is perhaps not that surprising. In these extremely long, cold wars with lots and lots of uncertainty, I think we're eventually going to see conflict.

[Waylon Wong]

Chris fourth reason for violence is commitment problems.

[Chris Blattman]

The classic commitment problem is this idea of a rising power facing a weakening one. If you're a weakening power and you look forward to the day when that rising power is going to dominate you, you have a choice. Am I going to take you out now and prevent your rise and maintain my dominance, or do I wait until the day when you might dominate me? And some scholars have called that the most important cause of war in human history. And they'll point to The Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece or the World Wars.

[Darian Woods]

Yeah, The Thucydides trap is the famous exact example.

[Chris Blattman]

The Thucydides Trap.

[Waylon Wong]

The Thucydides trap recalls how ancient Sparta felt threatened by the rise of Athens, which led to the Peloponnesian War. Now it refers to the risks of conflict anytime a growing country starts to rival an existing power.

[Chris Blattman]

And the reason we should care about this is because every single time Xi Jinping talks to foreign journalists, or for that matter, a US President, he brings up the Thucydides trap. Right now, the one thing we've learned is it's not. There's nothing inevitable about it. And I think the best bets are not for there to be a war between the United States and China, but it's fundamentally scary and dangerous if Xi Jinping thinks that war is inevitable between rising powers.

[Darian Woods]

Chris's fifth and final reason for why we fight is misperceptions. Again, Chris brings up the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Chris Blattman]

Most people say that Putin was overconfident. They say that he was overconfident either because of his psychological bias or because he was getting bad information. Basically because people weren't pushing the real truth up the chain.

[Waylon Wong]

Yeah. In reality, Ukraine was no way near as much of a pushover as Putin might have been led to believe.

[Darian Woods]

It's all a bit gloomy, but Chris's somewhat optimistic take though is that usually the high costs of war reduces the chance of all out violence.

[Waylon Wong]

Chris says we often think about drawn out conflicts like the Iraq war, but what about all the very short fights? In 2003, the US deployed to Liberia and helped end a years long civil war in a matter of days.

[Darian Woods]

This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim and Angel Carreras with engineering by Travis Hagan. It was fact checked by Cierra Juarez. Cait Concannon edits the show and the indicator is a production of npr.

[Adrian]

There is so much news that we're following.

[Waylon Wong]

Yeah, but we only have five shows a week. Only five.

[Adrian]

So we should do 20 shows a week, I guess. Is that what you want, Waylon?

[Waylon Wong]

Yeah, give me a Red Bull. Get right on it.

[Adrian]

Yeah. Well, we want to bring you more news and analysis each week and that is why we have officially launched a newsletter.

[Waylon Wong]

That's right. Every Friday we will bring you the news we couldn't get to answer your listener questions, put out call outs and tell you what we're doing outside of work.

[Adrian]

Mostly paragliding.

[Waylon Wong]

Wow. Adrian Extreme Sports. Sign up [e-mail] indicator newsletter.

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