Why a secret superpower condominium could be “rational” in the age of WMD—and what it would buy compared to confrontation or World War
We are moving closer to a WWIII confrontation and the superpowers blame each other for it. However, a massive war does not really make sense for any of them. The only realistic option is to have at least a secret top-level agreement about the basic fundamentals of staying intact while preventing normal countries from becoming threats.
The days of traditional hubris have been over for a long time. Napoleon had marched his forces through Europe and straight into the muddy and frozen Russian terrain and had to direct them back. Very little was left of them when they got home. Hitler with his frail national socialist economy chose to invade the USSR with only 3 million men, few armored vehicles, no strategic bomber force and no clear intelligence about Russian troop strength and vehicle numbers.
The end of WWII saw the first use of nuclear weapons against Japan while the Germans were lucky they didn’t get hit with “Operation Vegetarian”, a battle-ready plan of dropping millions of Anthrax cattle cakes over German territories.
Hubris leads to defeat. Solid alliances hold.
If the old French monarchy had allied itself with the British empire and some German territories they could have conquered the world. Instead they caused each other massive damage.
Alliances are key. But sometimes it is preferable they remain secret. Sir Christopher Munro, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, explained in this book The Sleepwalkers how France, Britain and Russia had banded together to smash the weaker alliance of Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Muslim empire in WWI.
One of Rome’s biggest problems was that everybody knew where Rome started and where it ended. A secret alliance or splitting up the empire in different pseudo-factions that are all one and the same at the very top is preferable. It gives you the strategic advantage of deceiving competitors.
The basic shift: after WMD, “winning” stops looking like victory
The nuclear-age realism is what leaders have admitted out loud: a nuclear war cannot be won in any normal sense. The most famous formulation is the Reagan–Gorbachev statement from the 1985 Geneva summit: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” coupled with an emphasis on preventing any war between the superpowers, nuclear or conventional. reaganlibrary.gov+1
Modern strategic scholarship often treats this as the “taproot” of the so-called nuclear revolution: once both sides have survivable retaliatory capability (secure second strike), military victory becomes impossible in any clean way, because the “loser” can still impose unacceptable destruction. Texas National Security Review+1
This is the key transformation behind what professor Quigley described in “Tragedy and Hope”: the old imperial logic—war as a profit-making tool of expansion—no longer scales cleanly at the top tier. Even if you could “win” territory, you might lose your economy, your legitimacy, your cities, your future.
So the strategic menu changes. And that’s where the hypothetical cartel of superpowers makes sense:
If open confrontation is too dangerous, the “rational” alternative might be a tacit or secret cartel—an oligopoly of superpowers that competes within rules while preventing the kind of escalation that destroys everyone.
What “a secret cartel” means in international politics
A cartel is a group of dominant producers who coordinate to control a market: restrict price competition, manage supply, punish defectors, and keep new entrants from gaining share.
Translate that into geopolitics and you get a “security cartel” (a great-power condominium):
- The product: security, stability, and permission to operate (trade routes, technology access, investment flows, financial clearing, alliance guarantees, deconfliction).
- The customers: everyone else—mid-tier states, small states, corporate actors, even insurgents who become bargaining chips.
- The cartel members: the top three superpowers (however defined in a given era).
- The cartel’s core aim: prevent top-tier war (especially nuclear escalation), maintain dominance, and manage the rise of challengers.
This cartel can be:
- explicit (formal agreements, summits, treaties),
- implicit (shared red lines and taboos),
- or secret (backchannels, unwritten “rules,” hidden trades).
And it can still include competition—cartels compete internally on margins, cheat, and fight proxy battles—so long as they maintain the meta-rule: don’t burn the whole casino down.
Thomas Schelling’s classic insight is that even adversaries bargain in the shadow of catastrophe; conflict becomes a form of coercive negotiation, including tacit coordination and signaling. sackett.net+1
A three-superpower cartel is, in that sense, a “Schelling world” institutionalized: Maybe not friendship, but managed rivalry.
Why a cartel could dominate a confrontational stance
A confrontational stance (cold war postures, maximalist rhetoric, arms races, aggressive brinkmanship) can produce discipline, alliance cohesion, and deterrence. It can also produce:
- higher accident risk,
- higher misperception risk,
- and runaway escalation dynamics.
A cartel structure—especially if partly hidden—has several advantages over full confrontation.
It lowers the probability of irreversible catastrophe
Open confrontation increases the chance that a crisis becomes a “point of no return” because leaders get trapped by:
- domestic audiences,
- alliance commitments,
- mobilization schedules,
- and sunk-cost emotions.
By contrast, cartel logic encourages escape hatches: private understandings that let leaders step back without public humiliation.
Historically, major nuclear crises produced exactly this kind of institutional “escape hatch” building: e.g., the Washington–Moscow hotline, created after the Cuban Missile Crisis to reduce miscalculation and speed communication. Sky HISTORY TV channel+1
This doesn’t prove a cartel exists. It shows that even bitter rivals adopt cartel-like risk management when the downside is civilizational.
It enables stable competition without constant mobilization
A pure confrontational stance can force permanent maximal readiness and constant overreaction. A cartel can allow “structured competition”:
- compete in influence, trade, and technology,
- but cap the escalatory pathways.
That is the basic logic of many arms-control and confidence-building measures: reduce the chance that routine friction becomes total war.
The Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)—banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater—was one early example of rivals agreeing to restrict behavior despite competition. National Archives+1
The Helsinki Final Act (1975) similarly shows great-power participation in a broader stability architecture in Europe during détente. Geschichte des Außenministeriums+1
Again: not “secret cartel,” but cartel behavior—cooperation at the meta-level while competing at the operational level.
It converts war into a bargaining chip rather than a tool
In classical imperialism, war is often treated as a tool for “solving” disputes decisively.
Under WMD conditions, war becomes less a tool of solution and more a tool of risk creation—raising danger to change the bargaining environment. This is Schelling’s insight about competitive risk-taking: you may not credibly threaten all-out destruction, but you can take actions that raise the chance of catastrophe in order to coerce. sackett.net+1
A cartel stabilizes this by quietly agreeing on limits:
- where risk-taking can occur (proxies),
- what is “off-limits” (direct homeland strikes, existential humiliations),
- and which escalatory ladders are taboo.
It doesn’t eliminate brinkmanship. It routinizes it.
Why a cartel could dominate a new world war
A new world war among top-tier powers in the nuclear/biological/chemical age is strategically incoherent for a simple reason: even “success” can look like ruin.
The nuclear-revolution thesis (in its strongest form) rests on the claim that once mutual vulnerability exists, military victory is impossible. Texas National Security Review+1
Even if one disputes the strongest version of “the nuclear revolution drains competition,” the narrower claim remains widely accepted: full-scale war among nuclear peers is extremely unattractive and therefore comparatively rare. Defense Priorities+1
So a cartel has a massive comparative advantage over world war: it preserves the core assets of all cartel members—population centers, industrial base, regime continuity—while still allowing them to extract value from the system.
World war is negative-sum.
Cartel governance can be positive-sum for the top tier (even if negative-sum for many smaller players).
The “security price” idea: how a superpower cartel can monetize order
A hidden cartel could dictate the prices for security and prevent normal countries from becoming too powerful.
That’s not a paranoid fantasy as a structural possibility; it is a standard imperial function, just upgraded.
In a security cartel, “price” is not only money. It is also:
- alignment,
- basing rights,
- resource access,
- voting behavior in international institutions,
- technology compliance,
- intelligence cooperation,
- and permission to trade.
Think of “security” as a subscription service.
Extended deterrence as insurance (and dependency)
When a mid-tier state receives a security guarantee (formal or informal), it gains protection—but also dependency. The guarantor can:
- demand policy concessions,
- limit independent diplomacy,
- and extract “premiums” in the form of arms purchases, basing, and strategic alignment.
A three-power cartel makes this more potent: smaller states can be told, explicitly or implicitly,
- you cannot escape the subscription model by switching providers, because the providers coordinate.
Arms sales as cartelized pricing
Arms markets are not free markets. They are permissioned markets:
- export controls,
- licensing,
- training dependencies,
- maintenance chains,
- and political conditions.
A cartel can coordinate to:
- keep certain capabilities scarce (e.g., advanced air defense, submarine propulsion, missile tech),
- prevent regional powers from achieving autonomous deterrence,
- and enforce “tech ceilings” that keep the top tier on top.
Financial infrastructure as a security lever
Modern reality is clear: the global system runs through chokepoints:
- reserve currencies,
- payment networks,
- insurance markets,
- shipping classification,
- semiconductor supply chains.
A cartel can coordinate to gatekeep these chokepoints and “price” access:
- comply and trade,
- resist and face isolation or targeted pressure.
This is imperialism without annexation: rule by permission.
Preventing “normal countries” from becoming too powerful: the cartel’s growth management
A cartel’s greatest threat is not the customer; it is the new competitor.
So the cartel’s natural instinct is to prevent:
- regional powers from acquiring strategic independence,
- technological leapfrogging,
- and especially WMD proliferation that turns customers into peers.
Nonproliferation as cartel discipline
The easiest way to understand global nonproliferation politics is as cartel logic:
- nuclear weapons are the ultimate equalizer;
- equalizers destroy cartel margins;
- therefore the cartel prefers monopoly or tightly controlled oligopoly.
This is not to say nonproliferation is evil. It is to say it aligns neatly with cartel interests.
Controlled regionalism: allow mid-tier power, but not peer power
Cartels often allow their customers to grow—so long as growth does not threaten cartel dominance.
In geopolitics that looks like:
- tolerate regional economic growth,
- but cap military autonomy;
- allow industrialization,
- but restrict frontier tech;
- allow influence,
- but prevent independent alliance systems.
The hidden advantage of secrecy: domestic politics and alliance management
If a “superpower cartel” were explicit and public, it would face immediate resistance:
- domestic audiences dislike admitting limits and compromises;
- allies dislike learning they are bargaining chips;
- rivals inside each state (military, intelligence, party factions) dislike constraint.
Secrecy solves this.
Secrecy allows cooperation without visible betrayal
Leaders can cooperate on existential stability while publicly performing rivalry to maintain legitimacy.
This is not hypothetical; it is the basic theater of many rivalries:
- harsh rhetoric,
- private channels,
- crisis backstops.
Even Reuters reporting in the context of Russia–U.S. nuclear risk notes that communication channels and hotlines persist as a way to avoid miscalculation. Reuters+1
Secrecy sustains alliance confidence (or at least avoids panic)
Allies often want the patron to be “fully committed.”
If the patron openly admits “we coordinate with your enemy to cap escalation,” allies may:
- pursue independent deterrents,
- hedge diplomatically,
- or take destabilizing actions.
So secrecy preserves alliance architecture.
The cartel can stabilize top-tier peace by relocating violence downward
This is the morally ugly part—and one of the most powerful reasons cartel logic can persist.
If the superpowers cannot fight directly, they can still:
- compete through proxy wars,
- coups,
- sanctions,
- cyber operations,
- covert action,
- and influence campaigns.
A cartel doesn’t necessarily end violence; it can redistribute violence:
- fewer great-power battlefield deaths,
- more “managed” instability in peripheral zones.
The nuclear era often shows this pattern: caution at the top, ferocity at the margins.
A cartel makes that pattern more systematic:
- “we won’t strike each other directly,”
- but “we will fight over the periphery—within agreed limits.”
A historical analogy: the Concert of Europe as a cartel prototype
A useful precedent is the Concert of Europe—a 19th-century arrangement among great powers that aimed to maintain the balance of power, manage spheres of influence, and avoid major wars through consultation and shared principles. Wikipedia+1
RAND’s analysis of “Concert of Europe and great-power governance today” describes it as an agreement among elite statesmen to adhere to and enforce principles governing relations among great powers. RAND Corporation
The Concert was imperfect and eventually failed, but it illustrates the core cartel principle:
- great powers may prefer managed order over unlimited conflict,
- because unlimited conflict threatens their own survival.
Now add WMD and the incentive intensifies:
- a 19th-century great power could gamble and survive defeat;
- a 21st-century nuclear power gambling badly can erase itself.
The cartel’s “terms of service”: what the big three would coordinate on
If we treat this as a theoretical design problem, what would a three-superpower cartel try to coordinate?
Escalation control infrastructure
- hotlines and secure backchannels Sky HISTORY TV channel+1
- agreed crisis-management scripts
- deconfliction mechanisms in theaters where forces operate near each other
Sphere-of-influence understandings
Not necessarily formal borders on maps, but tacit rules:
- “This is where you can push.”
- “This is where you’ll trigger a dangerous response.”
- “Here we’ll trade concessions.”
Technology ceilings
- export controls,
- restrictions on advanced military tech diffusion,
- coordinated denial of frontier capabilities to rising states.
Nonproliferation enforcement
- pressure campaigns (sanctions, diplomacy, covert sabotage),
- selective tolerance (some proliferation is tolerated when it serves cartel aims),
- coordination to keep the number of “true peers” small.
Information management
- mutual restraint on certain destabilizing disclosures,
- tolerance of propaganda as long as it doesn’t trigger uncontrollable escalation,
- possibly tacit “rules” about interference thresholds.
The point is not that these are ethically good. The point is that they are cartel-rational.
Why WMD makes cartel logic especially attractive: The ceiling of pain becomes too high
WMD increases the scale and speed of destruction. That raises the expected cost of war so dramatically that even a small probability of escalation becomes unacceptable.
This is the strategic content of the “nuclear war cannot be won” doctrine. reaganlibrary.gov+1
Deterrence favors the status quo over conquest
The nuclear-revolution literature often emphasizes that mutual vulnerability tends to favor defenders (deterrence) more than challengers (compellence). Texas National Security Review
This pushes great powers away from direct conquest and toward:
- bargaining,
- influence,
- and indirect control mechanisms.
Competition migrates to domains where losses are containable
Instead of tank columns and invasions, you get:
- economic coercion,
- sanctions,
- intelligence competition,
- cyber operations,
- and “gray-zone” tactics.
A cartel thrives in exactly these domains because they are:
- scalable,
- deniable,
- and less likely to trigger immediate civilization-level retaliation.
12) The stability–instability trade: cartel peace at the top can mean more aggression below
One of the classic warnings in nuclear strategy is that mutual deterrence can reduce the likelihood of all-out war while increasing “lower-level” conflict—because actors feel shielded from total retaliation.
A cartel would intensify that:
- top-tier war is “off the menu,”
- so rivalry finds outlets that stay below the threshold.
That can be “advantageous” to cartel members:
- they avoid existential risk,
- they still contest influence,
- and they can monetize security provision.
But it can be disastrous for smaller states:
- they become arenas,
- bargaining chips,
- or sacrificed buffer zones.
13) The cartel’s internal problem: cheating, mistrust, and three-player instability
Cartels are hard to sustain in economics because members have incentive to cheat: undercut price, expand output, take extra market share.
A three-superpower cartel has the same problem, plus ideology and domestic politics.
Cheating is structurally tempting
- seize a momentary advantage,
- push in a region while others are distracted,
- deny responsibility,
- pocket gains before the cartel “punishes” you.
Three-player balance is harder than two-player
Bipolar systems often have clearer deterrence logic.
Tripolar systems produce:
- shifting coalitions,
- fears of two-on-one,
- and constant suspicion.
A cartel might therefore be less stable as the system becomes more multipolar.
Domestic factions can sabotage cartel discipline
Even if top leaders prefer stability, institutions might not:
- militaries like budgets,
- intelligence agencies like freedom of action,
- ideological factions like crusades,
- and economic elites like winning.
So cartel governance requires internal control, not only external agreement.
The moral hazard: cartel order can become a protection racket
If the cartel “prices security,” it can also create demand for its own product.
A protection racket works like this:
- amplify fear,
- then sell protection.
A security cartel can drift into:
- intentionally sustaining regional threats,
- maintaining “managed instability,”
- and using crises to extract concessions.
This is the dark symmetry: the cartel prevents world war, but it may keep the world permanently tense—because tension is profitable and keeps customers dependent.
The central paradox: a cartel might be the most “peaceful” way to preserve domination
A three-superpower cartel is not utopia. It is a theory of peace through oligarchy:
- less apocalyptic war,
- more controlled coercion,
- and a structured ceiling on who is allowed to become powerful.
It is “peace” in the sense of no nuclear exchange among the top three.
It may be oppression and extraction for many others.
That’s why this idea is politically explosive: it suggests that the absence of world war could coexist with—perhaps even require—an elite-managed global hierarchy.
And it resonates strongly with the WMD logic acknowledged by states themselves: if nuclear war cannot be “won,” then great powers have overwhelming incentive to treat war as an unacceptable method of imperial advancement. reaganlibrary.gov+1
Alliances and guarantees: security as a subscription
What’s being priced: protection from invasion, regime survival, and access to the patron’s military ecosystem.
The “fee” can include:
- basing rights and overflight access
- alignment in international forums
- interoperability requirements
- purchase of patron-made systems
- limits on independent diplomacy (“don’t provoke my rival”)
Cartel advantage: if the top tier coordinates red lines, smaller states can’t “shop around” for autonomy as easily. A guarantor can quietly say: Yes, you can defect from me—but the other pole won’t truly underwrite you either.
How it prevents peers: extended deterrence reduces the customer’s incentive to build independent strategic weapons—especially nuclear capabilities—keeping the “ultimate equalizer” rare.
Technology: gatekeeping the frontier (chips, AI, quantum, standards)
What’s being priced: the ability to climb the value chain into peerhood.
The cleanest contemporary example is advanced semiconductors and AI compute. A U.S. Congressional Research Service report describes U.S. export controls aimed at sustaining a lead in advanced chips and slowing China’s development of competitive capabilities, including defense-related uses. Congress.gov
This can be paired with:
- extraterritorial rules via supply-chain chokepoints
- “friend-shoring” and standards-setting clubs
- investment controls (not just trade controls)
For example, AP reporting describes a U.S. Treasury rule (effective 2025) restricting certain U.S. investments in sensitive Chinese tech sectors (AI, chips, quantum) to prevent support for military-relevant capabilities. AP News
Cartel logic: if you can delay a rival’s frontier tech by five to ten years, you may avoid a military parity window—without firing a shot.
Intelligence: privileged truth as a tradable commodity
What’s being priced: warning, targeting, legitimacy, and “narrative air support.”
Intelligence partnerships are a hidden currency:
- shared SIGINT can function like strategic insurance
- access can be revoked (or selectively shared) as punishment
- intelligence can be used to discipline allies (“we know what you’re doing”)
Cartel-style bundling: security guarantees + intelligence sharing + advanced tech access become a package. If you break cartel norms, you don’t just lose weapons—you lose the truth pipeline that makes your state safer.
Tripolar cartel stability: a deeper game-theory section
Why “three” is harder than “two,” and what mechanisms could hold it together
Think of cartel stability as a repeated game under catastrophic risk:
- Cooperate (C): avoid direct war, respect some red lines, manage crises, share minimal predictability.
- Defect (D): push aggressively for advantage (encroach, arm proxies, sabotage tech, humiliate rivals, threaten regime survival).
In a two-player setting, you can often stabilize cooperation with:
- repeated interaction (“shadow of the future”)
- credible punishment (reciprocity)
- clear signaling
In a three-player setting, three destabilizers intensify:
Monitoring and attribution (the “gray-zone cheat” problem)
Cartels fail when members can cheat without being caught.
In geopolitics, cheating is often below the threshold of proof:
- cyber operations
- deniable covert support
- “private” military actors
- engineered economic shocks
- disinformation
Even if everyone “knows,” the absence of clean attribution weakens punishment and encourages creeping defection.
This is why crisis-management infrastructure matters: it’s not trust; it’s verification and communication.
Coalition dynamics: “two-on-one” fears
In a triad, each actor worries about becoming the isolated third.
This creates a permanent incentive to:
- peel one rival away (“wedge strategy”)
- offer side payments (trade deals, tacit regional concessions)
- keep relations with both “just good enough” to avoid encirclement
Tripolarity is famously debated: some analysts treat it as unstable because of shifting alignments; others distinguish types of tripolarity and warn that definitions matter. Schweller notes that disagreement often stems from different definitions of tripolarity (three roughly equal poles vs. any triadic configuration). ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu
More recent work argues tripolarity can be especially violent compared to bipolarity or multipolarity—precisely because coalitions and miscalculation risks are sharper. cejiss.org
For cartel stability, the implication is harsh:
- a triad can cooperate, but it must constantly manage coalition paranoia.
Asymmetric stakes: each crisis matters differently to each pole
Cartel discipline breaks when:
- one pole sees a theater as existential,
- another sees it as peripheral,
- and the third sees it as a bargaining chip.
In those cases, “compromise” can look like betrayal domestically. Domestic audiences then raise the cost of cartel behavior.
The cartel’s “enforcement” mechanisms (how punishment works without war)
Economic cartels use price wars, exclusion, and quota punishment. A superpower cartel can use:
- financial punishment (sanctions, payment restrictions)
- tech punishment (export denial, standards exclusion)
- security punishment (arming rivals, withdrawing intelligence cooperation)
- status punishment (diplomatic isolation, legal warfare)
- proxy punishment (pressure in third theaters)
Notice how these map directly onto the security-pricing typology: cartel enforcement is mostly pricing retaliation, not battlefield annihilation.
Historical comparison: Concert of Europe → Cold War détente “plumbing” → contemporary triad crisis management
Concert of Europe: cartel governance before WMD
The Concert of Europe is a near-perfect proto-model of oligarchic order-management.
Britannica describes it as a post-Napoleonic consensus favoring preservation of territorial and political status quo and assuming a responsibility/right of great powers to intervene and impose collective will on states threatened by internal rebellion. Encyclopedia Britannica
RAND similarly frames the Concert’s core as an agreement among elite statesmen to adhere to and enforce principles governing great-power relations on the continent. RAND Corporation
Cartel-like features:
- “members” were the great powers; everyone else was managed
- regular consultation (or ad hoc congresses)
- enforcement against disruptive ideology (revolution) and boundary changes
- sphere-of-influence logic without modern institutions
What it lacked: a WMD catastrophe ceiling. The Concert reduced major war for a time, but it did not make war irrational—only inconvenient.
Cold War détente tools: explicit “plumbing” for catastrophic risk
The Cold War is where “cartel mechanics” become technologically and legally explicit, because the stakes demanded it.
1) Hotlines and direct communication
The U.S.–Soviet hotline agreement (1963) is widely cited as a response to communication delays during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it aimed to reduce accidental escalation risk. Sky HISTORY TV channel+1
2) Rules to prevent accidents becoming crises (INCSEA)
The 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement was designed to reduce the chance that naval encounters escalate, establishing conduct rules and annual reviews. U.S. Department of State+2Wikipedia+2
3) Arms control as predictability, not friendship
SALT I and the ABM Treaty are often described as major détente achievements that limited certain categories of strategic systems and tried to stabilize the arms race. Geschichte des Außenministeriums+1
4) The Helsinki Final Act and confidence-building measures
The Helsinki Final Act (1975) concluded the CSCE process and addressed wide issues affecting Cold War relations, including security and norms. Geschichte des Außenministeriums+1
Cartel interpretation: these tools didn’t end rivalry; they built guardrails. They made it easier for the top tier to compete without sliding into suicide.
Quigley’s “nuclear stalemate” umbrella point fits here: the top tier becomes constrained in direct coercion, so it builds management systems and fights indirectly. ia800707.us.archive.org
Contemporary U.S.–China–Russia crisis management: a more brittle, tripolar version
The current era looks less like a stable concert and more like guardrails under stress—partly because arms control has frayed and because tripolarity makes coordination harder.
U.S.–Russia: hotlines and risk-reduction centers persist amid hostility
Reuters reported in October 2024 that emergency hotlines between Russia and the U.S./NATO remained operational even as nuclear risks rose, including a “deconfliction” line created in 2022 related to the Ukraine war. Reuters
At the same time, Reuters also reported later in 2024 that the Kremlin said a certain crisis hotline was “not in use” at that moment—an illustration of how political conditions affect even existing mechanisms. Reuters
TIME has described the U.S. National/Nuclear Risk Reduction Center as maintaining communications with Russia even as treaty architecture weakens. TIME
U.S.–China: selective crisis-management mechanisms and stop–start dialogue
The U.S.–China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA), signed in 1998, is often described as a framework to manage risks at sea and in the air. 南海战略态势感知计划+1
CUES (2014) provides standardized signals/procedures for unplanned sea encounters among WPNS participants (including both China and the U.S.), aiming to reduce incident escalation. Maritime Safety Innovation Lab LLC+1
On the political-military side, U.S. defense messaging repeatedly emphasizes the importance of open lines; for example, DoD reporting around Austin’s 2024 meeting with China’s defense minister highlights the push for multi-level communications. U.S. Department of War
Analytically, China’s use of hotlines is sometimes described as “selective,” with political signaling and narrative control incentives. Jamestown Stiftung
Evidence of ongoing (and newly announced) channel-building
AP reported in November 2025 that the U.S. and China agreed to establish direct military-to-military communication channels, with the U.S. defense secretary framing it as deconfliction/de-escalation. AP News
Separately, the U.S. DoD’s 2025 China report says DoD remains committed to open lines to reduce risk and manage crisis, with engagement focused on crisis communication and operational safety. U.S. Department of War
The arms-control backdrop is deteriorating, raising the value of “cartel plumbing”
AP noted in mid-2025 that New START was nearing expiration in February 2026 and that broader arms-control erosion raises arms race concerns. AP News
Cartel interpretation: the contemporary triad has some guardrails, but fewer stable “concert-style” norms and weaker treaty scaffolding. That increases the appeal of informal or semi-hidden coordination—because formal coordination is politically harder.
Putting it together: what a three-superpower cartel buys (and what it costs)
What it buys the top tier
- Catastrophe avoidance without pretending rivalry disappears
- Revenue and leverage through security pricing (alliances, arms, finance, tech, intelligence, sanctions)
- Growth management (slowing the rise of challengers via tech/finance constraints)
- Controlled competition (proxy contests and bargaining without direct war)
What it costs everyone else
- Sovereignty becomes conditional (permissioned autonomy)
- Violence relocates downward (proxy wars and “managed instability”)
- Innovation throttling (tech ceilings and standards clubs)
- Permanent hierarchy justified as “stability”
And Quigley’s darker warning sits underneath: nuclear stalemate can “open the door” to fragmented authority and indirect conflict under the umbrella of restraint. ia800707.us.archive.org In cartel terms: the top tier may keep itself safe by letting the periphery burn—so long as it doesn’t ignite the core.
