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<\/p>\nWhen we think of evil, we often imagine it as selfish, ruthless and uncompromising. It seems unlikely that such forces would ever work together. After all, two predators fighting over the same prey rarely cooperate.<\/p>\n
Yet history and fiction are full of unlikely alliances. Dictators who despise one another\u2019s ideologies make treaties. Villains with incompatible ambitions join forces. Rivals temporarily set aside their differences when a greater obstacle stands in their way.<\/p>\n
At first glance, it seems counterintuitive, but cooperation doesn\u2019t require friendship. It doesn\u2019t even require trust. Sometimes, it requires nothing more than a shared interest.<\/p>\n
That is the real secret behind the unholy alliance. Two parties can have completely incompatible ultimate goals while recognizing that, for the moment, working together is more profitable than fighting each other.<\/p>\n
The arrangement is transactional. Each side sees the other not as a friend, but as a useful tool and that creates an interesting paradox: self-interest doesn\u2019t prevent cooperation. It can make cooperation possible.<\/p>\n
The problem comes later. When the common objective disappears, the reason for cooperation disappears with it. And when the benefits of betrayal become greater than the benefits of loyalty, the alliance can collapse with remarkable speed.<\/p>\n
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The Pact of Steel<\/strong><\/p>\n The relationship between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini provides an early example of how regimes with overlapping ambitions can form a powerful strategic partnership.<\/p>\n By 1939, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had developed increasingly close ideological and geopolitical ties. Both sought to overturn aspects of the post-World War I international order, expand their territorial influence and challenge the existing European powers.<\/p>\n That convergence produced the Pact of Steel, a military and political alliance signed in May 1939.<\/p>\n The relationship was hardly one of equals with identical interests. Germany\u2019s ambitions increasingly centered on domination of continental Europe, while Mussolini pursued his own vision of an expanded Italian empire in the Mediterranean and Balkans. Their strategic priorities did not always align and Italy\u2019s military preparedness lagged far behind Germany\u2019s.<\/p>\n Yet cooperation offered advantages to both. Germany gained a stronger partner and greater strategic depth in southern Europe. Italy gained the backing of Europe\u2019s most powerful revisionist regime and an opportunity to expand its own influence.<\/p>\n Their interests overlapped enough to make cooperation worthwhile. That is an important distinction. The alliance didn\u2019t require Hitler and Mussolini to want exactly the same future. They simply wanted enough of the same things in 1939.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Pact of Convenience, Not Conviction<\/strong><\/p>\n The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 is an even more striking example.<\/p>\n On an ideological level, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies. Nazism was built around racial hierarchy and virulent anti-communism, while the Soviet regime was founded on Marxist-Leninist ideology and regarded fascism as an existential political enemy.<\/p>\n Yet Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin temporarily put that hostility aside.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Because their immediate interests aligned.<\/p>\n Hitler wanted to invade Poland without immediately facing a two-front war against both Poland\u2019s allies in the West and the Soviet Union in the East. Stalin wanted time to rebuild Soviet military strength while securing territory and strategic depth along the Soviet Union\u2019s western frontier.<\/p>\n The resulting agreement included a secret protocol dividing much of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Poland was invaded and partitioned between the two powers.<\/p>\n Neither leader suddenly became a believer in the other\u2019s ideology. They simply concluded that cooperation was temporarily more useful than confrontation and the arrangement had an expiration date.<\/p>\n On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. The alliance didn\u2019t fail because the two regimes suddenly discovered that they disagreed. They had always disagreed.<\/p>\n It failed because the strategic calculation changed. The moment Hitler believed he had more to gain by attacking Stalin than by cooperating with him, the pact was finished. It just so happened that Hitler arrived at this conclusion first.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Villain Who Needed a Villain<\/strong><\/p>\n Fiction loves this kind of arrangement because it creates an inherently unstable relationship.<\/p>\n In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Loki and Thanos provide a particularly entertaining example. Loki wanted power, recognition and ultimately the throne of Earth. Thanos had a far more expansive objective: collecting the Infinity Stones and using their power to reshape the universe according to his own vision.<\/p>\n Their goals weren\u2019t merely different. They were operating on completely different scales.<\/p>\n Thanos gave Loki something he desperately needed: resources.<\/p>\n Loki, in turn, became an instrument for advancing Thanos\u2019 immediate objective. He received an army and the opportunity to seize the Tesseract. Thanos got an agent capable of creating chaos on Earth and distracting the Avengers.<\/p>\n Neither needed to embrace the others worldview. They only needed to believe that the arrangement benefited them individually. And Loki made the classic mistake of assuming that being useful to someone means being indispensable to them.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n An unequal alliance can be even more dangerous than an alliance between equals, because the weaker party may believe it is manipulating the stronger party while the stronger party regards it as disposable.<\/p>\n The relationship works only as long as their interests overlap.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Wizard Who Wanted to Be the Dark Lord<\/strong><\/p>\n The relationship between Saruman and Sauron in The Lord of the Rings<\/em> demonstrated an even more deceptive version of the same principle.<\/p>\n Saruman was ostensibly working for Sauron. He raised an army, destroyed the Shire\u2019s political order and attacked Rohan, all while contributing to the larger war against the forces opposing Sauron.<\/p>\n But Saruman wasn\u2019t truly loyal. He wanted the power for himself.<\/p>\n His ultimate ambition was not to spend eternity as Sauron\u2019s servant. He wanted the One Ring and the power it represented, potentially allowing him to become a rival to the Dark Lord. That made their relationship less an alliance than a temporary convergence of interests.<\/p>\n Sauron believed Saruman was serving him. Saruman believed he could exploit Sauron\u2019s war for his own purposes. Both were trying to use the other.<\/p>\n That is the dangerous beauty of an unholy alliance: both sides can believe they are the one doing the exploiting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Master and the Apprentice<\/strong><\/p>\n The relationship between Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine takes the concept in another direction.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t really an alliance between equals. This was a hierarchy. Palpatine was the master. Vader was the apprentice.<\/p>\n Yet, the relationship was built around a peculiar tradition of the Sith that the apprentice is expected to eventually overthrow the master, while the master spends his time making sure the apprentice never becomes powerful enough to succeed.<\/p>\n That creates a permanent contradiction at the heart of their partnership. Vader provided something Palpatine desperately needed. He brought overwhelming military power, physical intimidation and a ruthless enforcer capable of hunting Jedi and crushing dissent.<\/p>\n Palpatine provided Vader with something equally important. He was the political power, source of resources, knowledge of the dark side and the machinery of the Empire.<\/p>\n Together, they were extraordinarily effective, but their relationship was poisoned by the knowledge that the partnership could not remain equal forever. Palpatine wanted Vader powerful enough to be useful, but never powerful enough to replace him. Vader, meanwhile, eventually began to imagine a future in which Palpatine is no longer necessary.<\/p>\n Their cooperation worked because their interests overlapped. Their rivalry existed because those interests ultimately could not remain aligned.<\/p>\n It was not friendship. It was not trust. It was a mutually beneficial dependency, maintained by fear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Allies Become Rivals<\/strong><\/p>\n The Sino-Soviet Split provides a remarkable real-world parallel to the relationship between Saruman and Sauron.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet Union and Communist China appeared to be natural allies. Both were communist states. Both opposed Western capitalism. Both sought to expand communist influence around the world, but shared ideology proved insufficient to guarantee shared interests.<\/p>\n The relationship began deteriorating after Nikita Khrushchev\u2019s denunciation of Stalin in 1956. Mao Zedong viewed Soviet \u201cde-Stalinization\u201d and Khrushchev\u2019s doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the West as evidence that Moscow was abandoning revolutionary principles. The dispute soon became much larger than a disagreement over doctrine. China increasingly challenged Soviet leadership of the international communist movement, while Moscow viewed Beijing\u2019s increasingly militant policies as reckless and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n Beneath the ideological arguments was a more fundamental struggle: who was going to lead the communist world? China was no longer content to be Moscow\u2019s junior partner. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had little interest in sharing its position at the top of the communist hierarchy with Mao.<\/p>\n The two countries also had competing national interests. They disagreed over strategy toward the United States, revolutionary movements in the developing world, relations with other communist states and the proper balance between national security and revolutionary expansion. China and the Soviet Union even competed for influence among communist parties outside their own borders.<\/p>\n The fracture eventually became much more than an ideological argument.<\/p>\n In 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew its technical advisers and terminated much of its economic assistance to China. By the 1960s, the two governments were openly attacking each other\u2019s legitimacy. Their rivalry spread throughout the international communist movement, with Moscow and Beijing competing for allies and influence.<\/p>\n Then the unthinkable happened. The two communist powers began treating each other as security threats.<\/p>\n Border tensions escalated into armed clashes in 1969 and the Soviet Union subsequently built up substantial military forces along its border with China. The countries that had once presented themselves as partners in a global ideological struggle were now preparing for the possibility of war against one another.<\/p>\n The irony is striking. The alliance didn\u2019t collapse because either China or the Soviet Union suddenly stopped being communist. They remained communist. It collapsed because being communist wasn\u2019t enough to overcome competing ambitions, national interests and the struggle for power.<\/p>\n That makes the Sino-Soviet Split particularly revealing.<\/p>\n Saruman and Sauron wanted the same broad outcome, a Middle-earth dominated by evil, but each wanted to be the one holding the throne.<\/p>\n Chinese and Soviet leadership shared a broad vision of a communist world, but neither was willing to permanently accept the other as the unquestioned authority over it. The lesson is the same in both cases. Two powers can agree about what they oppose while violently disagreeing about who gets to decide what comes next.<\/p>\n Shared enemies can create alliances. Shared ideologies can create alliances. But neither guarantees loyalty.<\/p>\n Eventually, the question becomes unavoidable: Who gets the power?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Strength in Numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n There is another reason unlikely alliances form. Numbers create power.<\/p>\n A coalition can appear stronger than the sum of its parts. It can intimidate opponents, provide legitimacy and create the perception that resistance is futile.<\/p>\n History is filled with examples.<\/p>\n During the Cold War, countries with very different political systems and domestic priorities often aligned themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union. Membership in a larger geopolitical bloc provided economic, military and diplomatic advantages that individual countries might not have been able to obtain on their own.<\/p>\n The same basic principle can be seen in modern international organizations and economic groupings. The G7 brings together Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. BRICS brings together countries with dramatically different political systems, economic models and foreign-policy priorities, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.<\/p>\n Neither grouping represents a perfectly unified worldview. Their members frequently disagree with one another, yet cooperation can still make sense because collective action can produce benefits that individual countries can not achieve alone.<\/p>\n The lesson isn\u2019t that one bloc is \u201cgood\u201d and the other is \u201cevil\u201d. It\u2019s that shared interests can produce cooperation even when deeper disagreements remain unresolved.<\/p>\n That principle is far broader than villainy. Corporations cooperate with competitors. Political parties form coalitions with factions they distrust. Nations trade with governments they consider hostile. And people who would never choose each other as friends can still work together when the alternative is worse.<\/p>\n The villains simply make the mechanism easier to see.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Fragile Nature of the Unholy Alliance<\/strong><\/p>\n The weakness of an alliance built primarily on immediate interests is not necessarily that it can not work. It can work extraordinarily well. The weakness is that it can be difficult to know how long the interests will remain aligned. As long as cooperation produces more benefit than betrayal, the alliance survives.<\/p>\n Change the calculation and everything can change. The common enemy disappears. The balance of power shifts. One side becomes stronger. A new opportunity appears. Suddenly, the person who was useful yesterday becomes the obstacle standing between you and tomorrow\u2019s prize.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why some of history\u2019s strangest alliances can also be some of its shortest-lived. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany did not need to resolve their ideological differences to cooperate. They simply needed to postpone them.<\/p>\n Saruman did not need to become loyal to Sauron. Vader did not need to love Palpatine. Loki did not need to share Thanos\u2019 vision. They only needed a reason to cooperate for now.<\/p>\n And that may be the most uncomfortable lesson of all. We often assume that shared values are the foundation of cooperation. They aren\u2019t always. Sometimes cooperation is built on something much simpler: \u201cI need what you have and you need what I have.\u201d<\/p>\n That can be enough to turn enemies into partners, at least temporarily.<\/p>\n The opposite of friendship isn\u2019t always hatred. Sometimes it\u2019s calculation. An alliance doesn\u2019t require trust. It only requires a reason not to betray each other. Not just yet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When we think of evil, we often imagine it as selfish, ruthless and uncompromising. It seems unlikely that such forces would ever work together. After all, two predators fighting over the same prey rarely cooperate. Yet history and fiction are … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/talesofmanythings.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-18-2-pact-of-steel-4.jpg\")
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\nNeither trusted the other.
\nNeither abandoned his ultimate ambitions.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/talesofmanythings.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-18-3-Molotov-3.jpg\")
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