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Notes -
While there is certainly much truth in that, I do not think that it is the whole story.
A nation which is prepared to fight a losing war just to make their invader bleed for every inch of land, Causal Decision Theory be damned, will obviously get worse outcomes in the case of a war. But if their pre-commitment is known beforehand, they are also much less likely to be invaded in the first place.
Also, there are outcomes which can be had from fighting which can not be had from agreements. Nations are not monolithic agents. There are a lot of outcomes which may be desirable to a government which are simply not feasible to achieve without war. For example, governments can use "we are at war" as an excuse to bypass normal decision making processes. "We may not be at war, but we negotiated that we will get 60% of all the benefits of being at war, so please curb your expectations with regard to decision making accordingly" will not fly domestically. Or take what the EU is getting out of the Ukraine war: depriving a belligerent Russia of its Soviet stockpiles and of the personnel which can be drafted with the least hassle. This is not something Putin could do politically without a war. Well, I guess he could promise not to use these Soviet stockpiles and soldiers against Europe, but if his promises could be trusted we would not be here in the first place.
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