This introductory chapter provides an overview of selective accommodation wedge strategies. Great power competition inevitably entails alliance competitions. Facing the fact or prospect of a hostile alliance, a state has a few basic strategic options. Whether its motive is defensive or offensive, whether it seeks to enhance or deplete balancing power, the menu does not change. If the state is not willing to surrender the primary values or goals the alliance would harm, it must try to reduce the alliance's potential to harm them. One way they can try to weaken the opposing alliance is by dividing it. Selective accommodation extends inducements toward a specific state in the opposition, in order to better isolate, deter, or coerce others. The chapter details that the book seeks to explain how selective accommodation works, when states try it, and what makes them succeed or fail. It examines eight cases of great power diplomacy surrounding the two world wars, in which selective accommodation was tried, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
