Can wars be forecasted? A central difficulty is that warnings of a looming war tomorrow are likely to affect behavior today. Whether decision-makers attempt to prevent its onset or to hasten it, the initial forecast will no longer hold. Predictable conflicts will therefore tend not to occur, and...

Research on international conflict has mostly focused on explaining events such as the onset or termination of wars, rather than on trying to predict them. Recently, however, forecasts of political phenomena have received growing attention. Predictions of violent events, in particular, have been...