I introduce this issue's symposium on the Russo-Ukrainian War by giving a brief overview of the bargaining framework, which asks why states sometimes use war to resolve disputes despite common knowledge that fighting is wasteful. I describe two types of mechanism—costly war and costly peace—and briefly discuss each symposium contribution in relation to its proposed mechanism(s). I also discuss the advantages of the bargaining framework for identifying and ruling out potential causal mechanisms in historical cases and close with some suggestions for continued work in the modeling dialogue between theory and evidence in the study of war.
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