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Why did Hugo Grotius believe war could sometimes be tolerated between independent states?

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Oil portrait of Hugo de Groot, also known as Hugo Grotius, by the workshop of Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, showing him with a ruffled white collar and dark clothing. — Hugo Grotius Portrait of Hugo de Groot (Hugo Grotius), oil on panel by the workshop of Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, 1631; in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Hugo Grotius, often called the father of international law, believed that war between independent states must be tolerated because there is no supreme judge available to provide judicial settlements for conflicts between nations.12

In his seminal work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Grotius argued that while war is a necessary, albeit unfortunate, means to resolve disputes, it should be strictly limited to just causes—specifically those that would otherwise be grounds for litigation, such as self-defense or the restitution of property. He further developed a theory of crime and punishment to justify certain conflicts as legitimate responses to wrongs committed by independent powers.2

Ultimately, Grotius’s objective was not to eliminate war entirely, but to minimize bloodshed by establishing a common law among nations. By grounding his theory in natural law and incorporating a multilayered structure of norms, he sought to regulate the conduct of states and restrain the violence inherent in the Thirty Years’ War and other conflicts of his time.12