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Technologos comments on Morality and International Humanitarian Law - Less Wrong
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Game theoretic thinking about wars (wars are bad, but not fighting would provide incentive for invasions, what would be worse) is extremely common, but completely at odds with historical experience - history consists of "wars to end all wars", "wars to punish aggressors" and alikes, not a single of them actually worked at stopping future wars. On the other hand just giving in, like many did to Romans, or Mongols, not too infrequently led to centuries of peace.
I haven't seen a single shred of evidence for game theoretic interpretation of wars.
Much of modern political science of conflict consists of testing game-theoretic models against evidence... either of the APSR or AJPS has dozens of such articles over the last decade. I actually wrote a thesis on game-theoretic models of war, so I have references if you'd like them.
Either way, we don't even have to conceptualize this as game theory (though explicit use of game theory may have prevented nuclear war--see Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict and his Nobel citation). Empires appear to frequently fight as a demonstration of their strength, if nothing else. Might that be why "giving in" to the Romans was followed by peace: other tribes could see that future wars would be met not by complacency but with force?