Commenting about Nancy Pelosi‘s provocative recent visit to Taiwan in my last week’s article I questioned the point of provoking an unwinnable conflict against China:

But what could be the point of provoking China? Do American Congressmen, think tanks and sundry Admirals and Generals think they can defeat China? Obviously, they can’t possibly think that, they just spent 20 years trying to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and failed. Even the Pentagon’s own war simulations came to the conclusion that their Pacific fleet would be destroyed in short order in a war against China. So the risks are clear. What benefits could possibly justify taking such risks?

The important bit to realize here is that the primary target of the war against China would not really be China. It would be the American people. The shiny new world war in the Pacific would deflect people’s attention from the metastasizing crises at home, redirect people’s anger at a foreign enemy and for the same high price also provide the ideal smokescreen for a radical crackdown on dissent against the racists, nazis, enemy sympathizers, deplorables, domestic extremists, insurrectionists and all other kinds of thought criminals. As James Madison warned us, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”