History Main / GenghisGambit

* TropeNamer: GenghisKhan, who went on conquests to unite the Mongols.

-->King Henry IV, [[WilliamShakespeare Henry IV, Part 2]]

* In ''{{Watchmen}}'', the BigBad plans to force America and Russia to put aside their differences and work together by [[spoiler:making it seem as if a massive AlienInvasion is imminent. It works.]][[supersecretspoiler:..[[OrIsIt Or does it]]?]]

** Cable turned ''himself'' into one of these in ''CableAndDeadpool''. It all works out until Reed Richards calls in [[spoiler:the friggin ''SilverSurfer'']] to take him down.

* Used by Yuan Shao in ''RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms''. Yuan Shao wanted Han Fu's territory because it was a source of food for his army. First, he sent a letter to another warlord, Gongsun Zan, proposing that they both attack Han Fu and split his territory. Once Gongsun was on board, Yuan sent a letter to Han Fu, warning him that Gongsun Zan was coming to attack him and that he should accept Yuan as a protector. Han accepts this, at which point Yuan uses his new position to strip him of all real power. When Han realizes he's been had, he flees to Cao Cao's service.
* One major theme among the many ploys of Emperor Leto II Atreides of {{Dune}} storyline. Foreseeing great troubles for humanity, he took it upon himself to unite and prepare them... by becoming the single worst oppressor and tyrant in the galaxy. When after several thousand years he thinks it worked, he gladly allows one of billions plans to assasinate him to succeed. [[ThanatosGambit In a manner he chooses]].
* Among the ([[ThirtyGambitPileup many, many]]) conspiracies in ''Illuminatus'' 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.
* Speaking of the Illuminati, they are used as the enemy of the catholic church in AngelsAndDemons.
* MagnificentBastard Havelock Vetinari of {{Discworld}} 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 enemy - an Ankh-Morpork WITHOUT Vetinari. [[VetinariJobSecurity You don't have to be the BEST patrician to succeed, just slightly better than the alternative.]]

* [[NineteenEightyFour Eastasia is our ally. We have always been at war with Eurasia.]] The point being, of course, that who's allied with whom against whom changes all the time, and these wars [[WildMassGuessing might not even be going on at all]], because ''all'' that matters is that the people of Oceania have a focus for their hate and PatrioticFervor.
** Consider that Oceania always has an ally among the other two world powers, the two are never allied against Oceania. This would seem to suggest that either the alliances, the war, or the separation of the three states (ie. one government is just sending people from different parts of the planet to go kill each other in yet another place) is a total lie (or all of these are lies).
*** It's [[AllThereInTheManual explicitly stated]] that the alliances change so rapidly 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.
*** One has to wonder though, if the wars don't actually exist, what is the point of the completely abrupt changes? At one point, the government changes from being at war with Eastasia to being at war with Eurasia in ''a single speech''.
* In BenCounter's {{Warhammer 40000}} GreyKnights novel ''The Hammer of Daemons'', Alaric sets up a FalseFlagOperation to convince people that their overlord had set up the GladiatorRevolt as part of this and unite them for the crusade. Alaric's operation works.

* In an episode of ''JeevesAndWooster'', Jeeves uses this to end the quarrels between Wooster's friends. He tricks Wooster into ringing the alarm bell, thus bringing everyone outside into the pouring rain, where they find out that the door is locked from the outside and they don't have the key. When asked why Wooster rang the alarm bell, he can't give a straight answer, and Jeeves makes him go to somebody else's house to find the key. This gives everybody else the opportunity to unite in anger against him, after which Jeeves "discovers" that he had the key in his pocket all along. When Wooster finally comes back, everybody else just laughs at him for having biked a mile in the pouring rain for absolutely nothing, and forgets that they were angry at him.

* [[spoiler:The Wizard]] in ''{{Wicked}}'' explains to Elphaba that this is what he was doing by making everyone believe the Animals are evil.
** Which is clearly a metaphor [[AdolfHitler for]]...

* Averted, no, failed miserably in ''Warhammer40000''. Despite all the prerequisites, that is a number of horrible galactic threats of all colors: hordes of AxCrazy barbarians, LegionsOfHell, omnicidal implacable robots and all-consuming alien locust - nothing seems to be able to divert the three more reasonable powers from each other throats.
** Keep in mind, of those three factions, ones idea of first contact amounts to "surrender or we bomb your planet to hell and gone", the second one just starts firing as soon as they're in range, and the last one will happily get ''billions'' of the other two killed to keep a few hundred of their own alive.
*** Averted on another level; the various horrific threats in the galaxy don't stop different groups within the Imperium of Man from hating and occasionally scheming against each other. ''Everyone'' hates the Administratum, the Inquisition is rightly feared by almost everyone who isn't an Inquisitor, the Adeptus Mechanicus are nutjobs with a machine fetish who for the most part can't relate to humans anymore, the Space Marines are barely even human anymore and sometimes act like it when dealing with other people, and the Imperial Guard are ordinary humans who have the bad luck of being cannon fodder for the other groups.

* ''{{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 the Kerrigan enters the picture...[[supersecretspoiler: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.
* KnightsOfTheOldRepublic 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]].
* This is Bian Zoldark's hidden motivation in ''[[SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration Super Robot Wars: Original Generations]]'' (and the game that inspired the story arc, ''SuperRobotWars2''). 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 threat - or the world's powers will unite against ''him'', either way being better prepared for the invasion to come.
** He actually uses a double-layered version of this trope. He's able to create the Divine Crusaders in the first place thanks to a FalseFlagOperation where one of his agents provoked the aliens during a secret PeaceConference, 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.]]
* [[spoiler:Irving Vold Valeria]] from ''WildArms2'' finances the terrorist group Odessa specifically so [[spoiler: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 [[XanatosGambit to use Odessa for this if]] ''[[XanatosGambit they]]'' [[XanatosGambit won]].]]

* Played terrifyingly straight in ''ModernWarfare 2'' in which [[spoiler:General Shepherd]] deliberately incites a shooting war with Russia in order to [[spoiler:instill patriotism, incite volunteers to the military, and unify America. If this sounds a little {{anvilicious}}, it comes across that way in the game, too. The death screens even warn about the dangers of excessive patriotism.]]
* In FrontMissionEvolved, Cornelius Werner tries this by [[spoiler:pointing a KillSat at all the world capitals]].

* One SMBC had a hero who tricked the nations of the world into uniting and depleting their nuclear arsenal. [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1852 It doesn't end well]].
->'''Reporter:''' So... nations can attack each other with no risk of nuclear annihilation?
->'''Well-Meaning Failure Man:''' Uh...
* [[SchlockMercenary Schlock Mercenary]] invoked this trope [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-05-04 here.]]
* [[OrderOfTheStick Nale's]] Father did this unintentionally; he later created a more complicated plan involving a coalition of [[TheManBehindTheMan Men Behind Men]] working to create 3 empires instead of one, that are actually working together to stay unified.

* In one episode of ''KingOfTheHill'', Bill becomes the emergency marshal of the local flood shelter and turns out to be a competent and well-respected leader...by blaming Hank for everything that goes wrong and eventually locking him up.
** Technically, the whole flooding of South Arlen -was- Hank's fault. But Bill had to go and muck it up by keeping everyone effectively imprisoned in the shelter by letting them believe the flood had not yet ended... when it actually had.

* This was Otto von Bismarck's favorite trick. To unify the many small countries around what is now Germany, he made Denmark look like an aggressor, then manipulated Austria into attacking Prussia, then France into attacking everyone. When the dust settled, Prussia had doubled in size by unifying with all of the small countries, France was humiliated, and Austria was broken.
** [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg And Denmark lost a chunk of land, as well as a lot of self-confidence.]]

* This one will admit to not being completely sure, but surely George S. Patton counts?
** He was sort of an inversion of the trope - he didn't care if anyone was united by anything, he just [[BloodKnight really fucking loved fighting.]] It was just good luck he was a good leader as well.
* One theory is that the entire ArabIsraeliConflict 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.

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* Among the ([[ThirtyXanatosPileup many, many]]) conspiracies in ''Illuminatus'' 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.

* A similar idea appears near the end of ''GundamWing'' manga with a rogue gundam pilot and a space war drone factory as the threat.

** He was sort of an inversion of the trope - he didn't care if anyone was united by anything, he just really fucking loved fighting. It was just good luck he was a good leader as well.

** 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.

A Sub-trope of ZeroApprovalGambit.

* Played terrifyingly straight in ''ModernWarfare 2'' in which [[spoiler:General Shepherd]] deliberately incites a shooting war with Russia in order to [[spoiler:instill patriotism, incite volunteers to the military, and unify America. If this sounds a little {{anvilicious}}, it comes across that way in the game, too.]]

* One major theme among the many ploys of Emperor Leto II Atreides of {{Dune}} storyline. Foreseeing great troubles for humanity, he took it upon himself to unite and prepare them... by becoming the single worst oppressor and tyrant in the galaxy. When after several thousand years he thinks it worked, he gladly allows one of billions plans to assasinate him to succeed. In a manner he chooses.

* MagnificentBastard Havelock Vetinari of {{Discworld}} 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 enemy - an Ankh-Morpork WITHOUT Vetinari. [[VetinariParadox You don't have to be the BEST patrician to succeed, just slightly better than the alternative.]]

* One theory is that the entire ArabIsraeliConflict 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.

** Consider that Oceania ALWAYS has an ally among the other two world powers, the two are NEVER allied against Oceania. This would seem to suggest that either the Alliances, the War, or the separation of the 3 states (ie, 1 government is just sending people from different parts of the planet to go kill each other in yet another place) is a total lie (or all of these are lies).

[[folder: Western Animation]]
*In one episode of ''KingOfTheHill'', Bill becomes the emergency marshal of the local flood shelter and turns out to be a competent and well-respected leader...by blaming Hank for everything that goes wrong and eventually locking him up.

*MagnificentBastard Havelock Vetinari of {{Discworld}} 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 enemy - an Ankh-Morpork WITHOUT Vetinari. You don't have to be the BEST patrician to succeed, just slightly better than the alternative.