Do historians agree that wars break out because of miscalculations?
score:7
No, wars break out because of finite resources and outcome is never 100% certain
Wars generally start when there is a finite amount of something ( land, oil, cattle, women, gold ...) and both sides want that something for their own use. This goes for all kind of wars, including religious (both sides want to organize society in a single territory according to their different beliefs) and civil wars.
Now, in your example, the weaker side should have recognized its weakness and submitted to demands of the stronger side without war. This actually did happen often (one example would be Gunboat diplomacy ). However, sometimes requests made by the stronger side are so huge that the weaker side is simply unable to comply without sacrificing ideology, national pride, or even its own very existence. By your logic, even in those cases the weaker side should yield because the outcome is inevitable, and at least some casualties could be avoided.
However, mathematically and physically speaking, war is such a complex process that a 100% (or even 99% ) precise prediction of the outcome is not possible. History is full of unexpected outcomes, from the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg to the Chinese communist victory in 1949 and maybe even the Taliban victory over US in the current war in Afghanistan.
Finally, there is another, psychological effect as a reason to wage war. If a weaker side calculates it is going to lose, and then yields without fight, it will portray themselves as cowardly. This in turn would embolden further aggression. On the other side, if a weaker side decides to fight (and extract certain price in blood from the stronger side) no matter the outcome, it would gain a reputation of fierceness and would deter potential aggressors in the future. Therefore, by fighting an hopeless war now, you actually lessen the possibility of hopeless wars in the future.
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