Doug Casey on why governments need external enemies

Over thousands of years of history, governments have always threatened each other with war.  It’s a good part of what they do to justify their existence, and it’s been said, correctly, that war is the health of the state.  Nothing has changed in that regard. 

The main reason that the US government is beating the war drums is that war [Russia-Ukraine] has always been a distraction from domestic problems.  Create a foreign enemy on whom to blame domestic problems, and it will reliably divert the news cycle from things you don’t want the hoi polloi to hear or talk about.  A real or fabricated foreign enemy unites the public.  The further the economy and the society deteriorate, the more war-mongering we’ll hear from Washington.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Likelihood of a Military Conflict Over Ukraine…," International Man, February 4, 2022