Genghis Gambit: Difference between revisions
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However, it's said that [[Enemy Mine|the enemy of my enemy is my friend]]. Hence, it follows that if you want to unite people, you must create a common enemy for them to oppose.
This is not for every incidence of enemy factions teaming up against a common
The threat itself is often a [[Sword of Damocles]].
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* ''[[Illuminatus]]'': Among the ([[Gambit Pileup|many, many]]) conspiracies is that the government(s) use this to keep the populace distracted from their own sinister agendas. A character is told to watch China after the USSR falls.
* ''[[Angels & Demons]]'': The Illuminati are used as the enemy of the Catholic Church.
* ''[[Discworld]]'': [[Magnificent Bastard]] Havelock Vetinari of manages to pull off an interesting variant; he knows the heads of the various guilds of Ankh-Morpork want nothing more than to see him "dancing the hemp fandango", but the only thing keeping him alive is one common
* [[Ursula K. Le Guin|Ursula K. LeGuin's]] ''The Lathe of Heaven'' uses the threat of aliens to unite the nations of Earth.
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'': Global power blocs Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania are locked in constant war. The alliances between the three change so that one state can never become too powerful and dominate the others. This is an understanding between the three powers that's been ongoing for decades. The real objective is to provide a focus for their own citizens' hate and [[Patriotic Fervor]]
* In [[Ben Counter]]'s ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' [[Grey Knights]] novel ''The Hammer of Daemons'', Alaric sets up a [[False-Flag Operation]] to convince people that their overlord had set up the [[Gladiator Revolt]] as part of this and unite them for the crusade. Alaric's operation works.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Averted in ''Warhammer40000''. Despite all the prerequisites, that is a number of horrible galactic threats of all colors: hordes of [[Ax Crazy]] barbarians, [[Legions of Hell]], omnicidal implacable robots, and all-consuming alien
** Notice the operative word there -- "...the three MORE reasonable powers..." Assuming the former troper was referring to the Imperium (which will not tolerate ''ANY'' xenos under ''ANY'' circumstances), the Eldar (who are willing to kill planetloads of non-Eldar just to save one Eldar in ten thousand years' time), and the Tau (who actually are fairly reasonable, in that they are willing to ally themselves with other non-hostile species, but are weak and tend towards being less-than-nice to, well, EVERYONE who isn't an Ethereal), then one can understand why no Galactic Alliance has been formed.
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* ''[[Starcraft]]'': The Confederacy plans to secretly allow the Zerg to rampage fringe planets as an incentive to keep dissenting colonists in line. Later, Mengsk adopts the same plan and uses it to unite the various factions into a single empire, under his own thumb. Then Kerrigan enters the picture... {{spoiler|and uses the UED to ally herself to the Protoss, only to betray them. Then she strengthens the UED in order to get Mengsk, Raynor, and Fenix to join her against them, before betraying them too. Finally, in a bit of irony, spoiler:''Kerrigan'' becomes the "common enemy" that the UED, Dominion, and Protoss unite against. However, they aren't nearly as successful.}}
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic|Knights of the Old Republic 2]]'' revealed that Revan's plan was to {{spoiler|attack the Republic with the Sith so that he could force galactic civilization to strengthen in preparation for the invasion of whatever he encountered out in the Unknown Regions}}.
** Not
*** The Old Republic and associated media make Revan's plans even more labyrinthine, in terms of motivations. {{spoiler|Initially, Revan and Malak are sent back to the Republic as a vanguard force for the exiled Sith Empire. At first, they do their job dutifully until they decide, as Sith often do, to rule for themselves. Thus, the initial assumptions that Revan's tactics were altruistically meant to prepare to Republic against the Sith Empire are actually a not quite correct. They were meant to properly prepare his own Empire against his master's. Malak tossing a [[Spanner in the Works]] ironically becomes the one thing which redeems Revan and, arguably, saves the Republic.}}
* ''[[Super Robot Wars Original Generation|Super Robot Wars: Original Generations]]'': This is Bian Zoldark's hidden motivation (and the game that inspired the story arc, ''[[Super Robot Wars 2]]''). He organizes the Divine Crusaders in a bid to conquer the world, figuring that either he will unite the world's powers against an alien
He uses a double-layered version of this trope. He's able to create the Divine Crusaders in the first place thanks to a [[False-Flag Operation]] where one of his agents provoked the aliens during a secret [[Peace Conference]], then wipes out both forces. He then broadcasts a speech making it look like the aliens attacked government forces that were planning to surrender to them. So he makes the aliens look like the bad guys so he can unite his forces into being the bad guys to unite the world against the aliens that actually ''are'' the bad guys {{spoiler|and then the aliens at the peace conference turn out to be a different race conveniently disguised as the bad guys and oh god it's so confusing when it's compressed like this.}}
* ''[[Wild Arms 2]]'': {{spoiler|Irving Vold Valeria}} finances the terrorist group Odessa specifically so {{spoiler|1=he would have an excuse to make ARMs an international strike force to better combat a different threat later on. It should probably be noted that he was also willing [[Xanatos Gambit|to use Odessa for this if]] ''[[Xanatos Gambit|they]]'' [[Xanatos Gambit|won]].}}
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2]]'' provided a very unintentional version of a Genghis Gambit. One particularly rich individual wanted to start a construction project in the Rupie Mountains and sent various hired hands like House Bowen to evict those clans who refused to step aside. One of the big attractions in the Rupie Mountains is the heated rivalry between the Bangaa Brotherhood and the Nu Mou Nobles. Guess what this individual, via House Bowen, wound up ending thanks to intervention by Clan Gully?
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* Used during the first world war by T.E. Lawrence to unite Arabic tribes. The English army was trying to fight the Turkish Empire, but Lawrence's goal was to create a pan-Arabic nation. Though he did not succeed, he did set the history for the future independence of Arabs from Europe.
** Not quite. Lawrence didn't give a crap about the Arabs or their independence. He was in it for the Queen.
* George S. Patton is an inversion of the
* One theory is that the entire [[Arab-Israeli Conflict]] is, at least in part, the result of Egyptian President Gamal Nassar trying to do this to the entire Arab World. He hoped that by painting the newly formed State of Israel as a common enemy of all Arabs, he would be able to unite the different regional, political, and religious factions under one banner. Unfourtnately for Nassar, the plan failed, and the situation has since taken on a life of its own
One of the reasons for the original Arab invasion of Israel in 48' (which the Israelis refer to as the second stage of their war of independence) is that the various Arab leaders of the area feared their unpopular regimes would soon face coups, and this was their way of avoiding it. The problem is, the Israelis won, and all of the invading Arab leaders had their governments toppled anyway just a few short years later.
* Of course, Muhammad essentially executed the trope in an [[Older Than Feudalism]] example by converting the constantly-infighting Arab tribes to Islam, which divided the globe into a "House of Islam" and a "House of War"... as in, "we should go be in charge of that to make it House of Islam". They subsequently exploded out of the Middle East, across northern Africa, and even conquered modern-day Spain. They probably only slowed down because they ran out of people who could stay behind and be in charge.
* [[Romania
* [[Pakistan]], with its aid-dependent economy, failing civil infrastructure, religious persecution, and subnationalist movements in every province, generally uses a mild version of this trope. It focuses all the people's attention and hatred on Kashmir and India, respectively, always stopping just short of outright war.
* This was Hideyoshi Toyotomi's strategy in the 1590s to unite the feuding warlords of Japan: invade Korea and China and let them deal with their carnal fury. They didn't make it past Korea.
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