>>2942211Youre half right and half wrong. The squeeze on middle powers is real but it doesnt need a conspiracy just basic game theory.
Two dominant players in a repeated game drift into a cartel on their own because open conflict is negative sum for both and the costs can be pushed onto whoever isnt at the table (middle powers).
This is why duopolies dont have price wars. The nixon-mao agreement was in the same pattern.
>never hurt eachotherThis is wrong. Nvidia lost tens of billions to export controls, huawei got cut off from TSMC and China shut off rare earth magnets from USA. Thats real economic damage. What they avoid is war because they both lose. Managed rivalry isnt fake rivalry.
But cartels are unstable and Taiwan cant be split like poland and the power balance keeps shifting so the deal gets renegotiated contantly. Cartels hold when the prize is money and break when the prize is world hegemony.
Your fix is the weak part. Everyone going autarkic is where the middle powers lose most because they lack economic scale. Better version that works is middle powers coordinating with eachother as a third pole.