Pretext for War: Difference between revisions

 

See also [[War for Fun and Profit]].

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Tintin|Tintin and the Broken Ear]]''. A [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] encourages Tintin (then working as the aide to a [[Banana Republic]]'s dictator) to declare war on a neighbouring country. Tintin point-blank refuses, so the executive frames him and he's forced to flee the country in a staff car. The car is fired upon by the [[Checkpoint Charlie|border guards]] and the incident is then used as an excuse for war.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' has many thanks to the machinations of [[Evil Chancellor|Chancellor]] [[Magnificent Bastard|Palpatine]]. In ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', he directs the [[Mega Corp|Trade Federation]] to invade [[Perfect Pacifist People|Naboo]] over a trivial dispute, and in ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' he deploys the clone army secretly created by his apprentice [[Christopher Lee|Count Dooku]] to Geonosis, sparking the Clone Wars.

* When Guy de Lusignan becomes King of Jerusalem in ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'', he releases Reynald in order for him to do something to start a war with Saladin.

 

== Literature ==

* The manufacture of such a pretext is a major plot point in both the film and book versions of ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]''.

* Mocked in the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' novel ''I, Q''. The Q Continuum has a mortal enemy, the M Continuum. The Ms decided they wanted to go to war with the Qs. Why? Because there is something about them that pisses them off (their exact words). The Q Continuum requested a more eloquent reason. So one of the Ms insulted the mother of one of the Qs. This horrific affront (Despite the fact that this Q, like all other Qs, didn't ''have'' a mother) could only be answered by a full scale war.

** Eh, the [[Your Mom]] taunt can infuriate many immortal, parentless beings. [[Captain SNES|Amon fell for it]].

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], the Chiss are only allowed to go to war if provoked (i.e. the other guy has to shoot first), so developing a pretext for preemptive strikes [[Batman Gambit|becomes a veritable art form]] for the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force. The CEDF wanted to take out the marauding [[Planet Looters|Vagaari]] for decades but were never directly attacked, so in ''[[Survivors Quest]]'' they {{spoiler|trick the Vagaari into attacking a Chiss diplomat (and the Skywalkers)}}, then into {{spoiler|hitting a major CEDF base}}.

 

* The Silurian captured by the humans in the recent ''[[Doctor Who]]'' two-parter hopes to be killed and tries to get killed, just to start the war.

** And several seasons earlier, the Slitheen try to start [[World War Three]] so they can [[War for Fun and Profit|sell]] the radioactive remains of the planet as fuel.

 

== Radio ==

** Diplomacy: “I’m going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.”

** There was also the incident where two very tiny alien races were on the brink of war due to a [[Your Mom]] joke, but what really pushed both parties over the edge was a random comment made by Arthur Dent that traveled through space and time.

 

== Theatre ==

* In ''Knickerbocker Holiday'', Stuyvesant, [[Glorious Leader]] of New Amsterdam, believing that national greatness lies more in guns than butter, suggests that war with Connecticut could be imminent because, he alleges, the Connecticutans have had the cheek to build a fort on the Connecticut River.

 

== Video Games ==

* In [[Dragon Age II]], the centerpiece of {{spoiler|Anders' [[Batman Gambit]] is that Knight-Commander Meredith would use his attack on the Kirkwall Chantry as a pretext for declaring open war against the Mages.}}

* ''[[Galactic Civilizations]] 2'' has a random event where people from one civ automatically assassinate a very high-ranking politician of another civ, forcing war between the two.

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:Politics Tropes]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]