A Mexican standoff is a confrontation where no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory.[1][2] Anyone initiating aggression might trigger their own demise. At the same time, the parties are unable to extract themselves from the situation without either negotiating a truce or suffering a loss, maintaining strategic tension until one of those three potential organic outcomes occurs or some outside force intervenes.
The term Mexican standoff was originally used in the context of using firearms and it still commonly implies a situation in which the parties face some form of threat from one-another; the standoffs can span from someone holding a phone threatening to call the police being held in check by a blackmailer, to global confrontations.
The Mexican standoff as an armed stalemate is a recurring cinematic trope.
- ^ Buytendijk, Frank (2010). Dealing with Dilemmas: Where Business Analytics Fall Short. Wiley. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-470-76848-8.
- ^ V&S Editorial Board (2015). Concise Dictionary of English Combined (idioms, Phrases, Proverbs, Similes). V&S Publishers. p. 94. ISBN 9789352150502.