A large body of game-theoretic work examines the process by which uncertainty can lead to inefficient war. In a typical crisis bargaining model, players negotiate according to a pre-specified game form and no player has the ability to change the rules of the game. However, when one of the parties has full bargaining power and is able to set the rules of the game on her own, the game itself becomes an endogenous decision variable. I formulate this problem in a principal-agent framework. I show that both the likelihood of costly war and the exact mechanism that yields it depend on the nature of the informational problem and the identity of the informed player.
