Interest-Based Coalition Sabotage / 利益瓦解合纵
Interest-based coalition sabotage / 利益瓦解合纵 enters the wiki through 《资治通鉴·周纪》92丨历史上第一位著名舔狗是谁？（1）, where 范雎 responds to a renewed 合纵 gathering in 赵国. The episode says he reads the coalition activists less as ideologues than as people looking for wealth and rank.
His countermeasure is therefore financial rather than military. Qin agents bring heavy money to Zhao’s Wuan city, hold banquets, distribute funds, and let the would-be coalition organizers turn on one another before the anti-Qin project matures.
The concept differs from 联盟自保失灵. Self-preservation failure describes allied states refusing to spend their own strength once a coalition reaches implementation. Interest-based sabotage acts earlier: it attacks the coalition labor market and trust network before the coalition has become an army.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》110-2｜秦始皇的CP为何被驱逐出国 adds a later and more coercive Qin version after 李斯 is restored. The source says 秦国 sends persuasive agents with gold and jewels into the other states, buys off elites where possible, kills those who cannot be bought, and alienates rulers from ministers before sending generals. This is broader than breaking one hezong meeting, but it shares the same logic: use money and court incentives to make rival states damage their own coordination before Qin’s armies arrive.
《资治通鉴·秦纪》112-1｜姚贾是如何凭一张嘴破四国合纵？ makes the later Qin pattern concrete through 姚贾. Instead of describing bribery abstractly, the source names a Qin-backed envoy who spends three years moving through Han, Wei, Chu, and Zhao, using royal authorization, gifts, speech, and money to prevent a four-state hezong plan from hardening. The episode’s point is that “mouth” works because it is backed by state resources and because the target coalition already contains exploitable incentives.
Key Claims
- A coalition can be disrupted by changing the incentives of organizers before armies move.
- Bribery works best when the persuaders or brokers already have mixed motives around wealth, office, and recognition.
- Sabotage can succeed without resolving the target states’ strategic fear of Qin; it only needs to prevent coordinated action at the right moment.
- The tactic fits 纵横家外交 because persuasion, money, reputation, and court access are treated as instruments of interstate power.
- Qinji 110-2 adds the coercive escalation: bribery can be paired with assassination and ruler-minister alienation as preparation for military conquest.
- Qinji 112-1 adds that a named envoy can convert royal backing and bribe money into court-level support across several target states.
Connections
- 范雎 and 秦国 - strategist and state using money to break coalition coordination.
- 李斯, 嬴政 / 秦始皇, and 秦国东进压力 - Qinji 110-2 restored minister, ruler, and later conquest setting.
- 合纵, 赵国, and 《战国策》 - alliance form, setting, and cited source tradition.
- 联盟自保失灵, 联盟裂缝利用, and 纵横家外交 - adjacent coalition-failure and diplomacy concepts.
- 远交近攻 - larger Qin strategy running beside the coalition sabotage.
- 姚贾, 李斯, 嬴政 / 秦始皇, 韩国, 魏国, 楚国, and 赵国 - Qinji 112-1 envoy-backed disruption of a four-state hezong plan.