Somewhat related to this that I've seen in a few TLs, thankfully less with time because it seems to be a dying trope, where many authors seem afraid of making the protagonist nation too powerful so the rival nation gets a boost in some way to make them stronger or "A New Challenger Approaches" situation where a new realm appears to be the new threat in order to balanace the main nation
Well, sometimes it can happen that the author makes the powerful nation too powerful but still manages to screw it up by making one of the following decisions:
[*]
You have outlived your usefulness:
So our beloved Protagonist Country has finally achieved its goal: to impose its dominance over the world with the help of its Good Allies. The world is heading towards a new age of peace under the benevolent leadership of Alt-NATO, and now all the problems that remain to be solved are climatic and economic in nature, right?
MISTAKE! The Protagonist Country has reached such a level of power that, in fact, it could survive without its Good Allies. What's more, the leaders of the Protagonist Country think, why do we continue to allow these imbeciles to continue existing?! We don't need them at all anymore!
So the Protagonist Country decides out of nowhere that it is going to do everything possible to antagonize and harass its Good Allies in every way it can think of, with the idea of attacking and destroying them when they do something (in response to provocations). of the Protagonist Country) that can be sold as a Casus Belli.
This is done mainly because the author needed a conflict to continue writing, but it's usually a development that comes out of nowhere.
Of course, the entire story is written in such a way that it seeks to convince the reader that the Protagonist Country is the victim of some conceited and ungrateful "allies" who believe themselves to be more important than they really are, and who must be "put in their place."
This is despite the fact that what we see is the Protagonist Country being unreasonably insulting and demanding, treating its "allies" as if they were nothing more than stupid vassals who must obey without question and whose needs can be and are in fact ignored systematically by the Protagonist Country.
[*]
Everyone must submit to me.
A variant of the previous one in which the Protagonist Country decides that, since they already dominate the world de facto, it makes no sense for neutral countries to continue to exist. So this is when the Protagonist Country develops a sudden interest in deploying "freedom of navigation missions" that involve warships invading other countries' territorial waters, causing collisions with civilian shipping in the area, and repeatedly ignoring requests. that they withdraw.
Or suddenly their air patrols are dedicated to violating the airspace of neutral nations, while the Protagonist Country's army feels a sudden appetite to carry out massive military maneuvers along the border with neutral nations, including the deployment of live fire. The Foreign Office suddenly begins instructing its ambassadors and diplomatic staff in the neutral nation to behave in the most insulting manner possible...
In short, the objective is the same as the previous one: for the Protagonist Country to obtain something that can be sold as a Casus Belli to mendaciously pretend to be the aggrieved party and be able to totally destroy the poor neutral country.
