Kurdish peshmerga and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s troops continue to face each other in the disputed territories. Since 2007, incident after incident occurred between these forces, with a shooting war between them narrowly avoided on several occasions. If this latest confrontation gets diffused, we can rest assured that another will flare up soon. Unless, that is, the underlying causes of the tension get dealt with.

The underlying causes of the tensions center around Prime Minister Maliki’s refusal to implement Article 140 of the Constitution, despite repeated promises to do so. As long as the territories around Kirkuk, Diyala and Nineveh remain disputed, the chance of armed conflict and a complete breakdown of the new Iraqi state looms over everyone.

In the political bargaining over the territories, military force is not a distinct alternative to diplomacy. It has become, rather, an indispensable complement to negotiation. That is why Maliki created the Dijla Operations Command, a special military unit beholden only to him and created to challenge Kurdish claims to the disputed territories. In a similar logic, the peshmerga remain absolutely essential. They remind Maliki that he runs a risk when he acts like the Constitution, power sharing and the democratic process are so many annoyances he must increasingly dismiss. Kurdish demands, or promises on paper, would carry little weight in Iraq nowadays if they did not have some armed force to back them up.

Such is the depressing state that Iraqi politics have fallen to. I do not believe that either Maliki or the Kurds want a war over the disputed territories, however. Maliki simply fears that acceding to Kurdish demands (e.g. fulfilling his own promises to the Kurds) on Kirkuk and other territories will prove very unpopular within his Arab constituency. In Iraq’s new electoral political system, that kind of unpopularity could cost him an election (and by most estimates, it’s not possible to “fix” an election by more than 3% without your cheating becoming much too obvious). He also fears that with added territories, Kurdish secession from Iraq becomes more of a possibility. The Kurds, in turn, made concessions on so many things – from the number of their seats in parliament and ministries in Baghdad to budgetary items and even remaining part of Iraq – all in return for promises about a mechanism for adjusting Kurdistan’s borders to include Kurdish areas to the south (Article 140 of the Constitution, essentially). To walk away empty handed after paying steeply for Article 140 therefore looks like political suicide for Kurdish leaders, who also have voting constituencies to consider. Hence the brinkmanship, maneuvering, threats and risky military moves by both sides in the disputed territories.

If neither the Kurds nor Maliki want a war over this, however, one might feel tempted to dismiss the current risks. As the old Turkish proverb goes, “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” Unfortunately, barking could still lead to biting here. More than a few wars broke out accidentally in world history. I will cite a few of the ways armed conflict can accidentally break out, drawn from scholarly work in international relations:

First, standard operating procedures. Militaries, whether of the peshmerga or Dijla variety, have orders and routines for dealing with various eventualities. These “standard operating procedures” typically include robust measures to defend against surprise attack, without the need to call headquarters for confirmation or permission. If a movement by the other side, such a an aerial reconnaissance flight, a scouting mission or a simple police operation against a third party, gets misinterpreted as an attack, the result can lead to a shooting war no one intended. The next time the peshmerga shoot at a Dijla Force aircraft or do something comparable, Dijla standard operating procedures might trigger a forceful response from them, quickly creating a feedback loop that becomes a war no one wanted in the first place.

When irrationality is added to standard operating procedures and mis-perception, the chances of accidental war increase even more. Plenty of psychology studies show that individual decision makers under stress – meaning limited time and incomplete information to make important decisions – make poor choices much too often. With tens of thousands of armed soldiers facing each other in a small swathe of territory, poor choices can have catastrophic results.

Finally, other psychological processes might come into play as well. “Cognitive mapping” and “cognitive dissonance” involve mental processes where people develop an image of themselves and others that is both unrealistic and resistant to change. In the case of tensions between Erbil and Baghdad, an example might be if both sides see the other as unredeemably deceitful and ill intentioned, and systematically ignore evidence to the contrary. As each party increasingly demonizes the other, they may also develop a fantasy of their own considerable superiority. Confident in a swift military victory (“You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees,” as the German Kaiser told his troops in August 1914), leaders in Erbil and Baghdad may start to see armed conflict as a desirable way out of their disagreement. When we roll the iron dice of war, however, the numbers don’t always come up the way we want.

All of these risks of accidental war should give everyone plenty of cause for concern. They’re also good reasons to work harder at a political settlement to remove the cause for tension.