Arthur Lee Burns, of the Australian National University, has discussed some interesting problems of a three-or-more person world. The deliberate provocation of war between two parties, by a mischievous third party, is a possibility when an overt act of ambiguous authorship can be introduced into the reciprocal-suspicion model; and the analysis takes on additional richness when one considers warning systems that, for technical reasons or by reason of joint custody, permit one or both of the central players to witness what is coming in on the other’s radar screen.

SEED: This is a ripe premise for a thriller or espionage story — a mischievous actor engineering a false-flag provocation to spark conflict between two powers.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 832