States compete and contend for many reasons, and sometimes those reasons are abundantly clear to the protagonists. But in other cases, the root causes of the disagreement are not well understood, and the level of animosity is greater than it should be. In this latter case, states know they disagree, but they are either confused or mistaken about the underlying source(s) of the problem. In these circumstances, remedying the problem will be much more difficult, and escalatory spirals are more likely.