Triangle like arrangement

When the principle agent model involves two principals many conflicts can arise. I have never personally experienced a conflict involving two principals, however the movie avatar comes to mind when discussing the triangle arrangement. For background information, the movie avatar takes place on a different world's moon sometime in the future. There is an indigenous humanoid populous in this world, called Na'vi, who are similar to new world Native American tribes in technology and culture. Humans have come to the world to mine the moon for its natural resources. For this task, some humans are sent in as humanoids to discuss and communicate with the indigenous peoples. Here is where the triangle arrangement is most evident.

In the movie, the main agent would be the main protagonists Jake and Dr. Augustine, who keep in contact with the Na'vi people early on. In this arrangement, the two principals are the indigenous people themselves and the military of the humans who want to mine the moon. In the film Jake and Dr. Augustine are trying to mediate a deal between the Na'vi people and the human military that would allow a peaceful interaction and allow humans to mine the Na'vi's moon. In the film, Jake and Dr. Augustine start to gain the trust of the Na'vi. They learn how important the biology of the moon is to their everyday lives and take part in many rituals and customs of the Na'vi people. After a while of learning a lot about the Na'vi people and becoming quite friendly with them they report their findings  to the human military. However, the head of the military is upset with Jake and Dr. Augustine thinking they are stalling and not making any real progress to mining the moon. Here, although the agent felt like establishing friendly relations was the most important performance indicator, the human military thought it was simply wasting time. The human military was quite upset with the agent's performance for taking so long to convince the Na'vi people to let them mine their home of natural resources. In the end, the human military decide to abandon talks with the Na'vi people and force their way into their homeland. They planned to forcefully remove the Na'vi and mine their homes after killing them and making them flee. So, in this case one principal decided to stop trusting the agent and take things into their own hands and annihilate the other principal.

Jake and Dr. Augustine were pressed for time trying to please the human military and speed up talks with the Na'vi all the while trying to respect and learn the culture of the Na'vi. This tension could have been resolved differently that would have benefited the Na'vi and the human military. If the Na'vi people were unwilling to give up their homeland for mining then they could have come to a compromise with the human military. Also, Jake and Dr. Augustine as agents could have made the demands of the human military more apparent to the Na'vi. As an agent it was their responsibility to communicate and mediate talks between the NA'vi and the military. They were supposed to please both principals, but had a superior obligation to the human military. In this respect, if the Na'vi were to compromise and let the human military mine for some natural resources, but contingent on preserving the health of the ecosystem they could have allowed them to mine off and on for a while. Likewise, the human principal could have respected the demands of the Na'vi and reduced their demands. In the end, the tension rose past it's breaking point. In real life, the stakes are almost never as high as it was in the Avatar. However, there are times where one principal will have to be pleased by the agent before the other principal. This is the situation that happened in Avatar where the Na'vi people took a back seat to the demands of the more invested principal, the human military.