Backroom Compacts Forged New Realities

This book examines how clandestine agreements among World War I powers forged the interwar geopolitical order, not as historical footnotes but as active architects of the new system. It investigates the tension between secret diplomacy and public transparency, revealing how backroom compacts reshaped sovereignty, alliances, and territorial arrangements when conventional diplomacy proved inadequate amid total war.
Secret treaties institutionalized information asymmetry, where restricted access to agreement terms created divergent knowledge pools among state actors. This meant critical decisions about war entry and peace terms were made based on incomplete shared understanding, fostering mistrust when secrecy lifted and demonstrating how asymmetric information flows undermine collective commitment in wartime alliances. As exemplified by the Treaty of London concealed territorial promises to Italy, wartime alignment was influenced without public disclosure, and alliance cohesion later weakened when the terms entered public discourse.
Covert incentive architectures embedded in secret treaties redirected state calculations from collective objectives toward private gain. By offering exclusive concessions not subject to public scrutiny, these agreements encouraged opportunistic realignments, showing how hidden payoff structures can destabilize coalition unity when individual rewards conflict with group strategic interests. The Sykes–Picot Agreement division of Ottoman territories according to Anglo-French interests rather than local realities demonstrates how secret pacts prioritized external powers gains over regional stability, creating incentive misalignment that undermined the legitimacy of the resultant order.