[elihu]

This seems likely; both sides might see it as a prisoner's dilemma situation, where there isn't any basis for trust and it's safer to destroy the other civilization before they're destroyed themselves.

(I don't think Iraq was actually such a situation, but at least on the American side some influential decision makers may have believed that it was.)

On the other hand, you might have something more like a cold war situation, where both sides have the capacity to destroy the other completely or almost completely but not without an equivalent counterattack, and so both sides have much more to lose than to gain by striking first.