Your war on the continent statement actually brings up a 3rd factor to my initial two. Those secret police, insurgency, proxy army methods are more or less how

Your war on the continent statement actually brings up a 3rd factor to my initial two. Those secret police, insurgency, proxy army methods are more or less how the US has executed war post-WW2. And no one (well not many people) want to brag in their biography that "yeah, I was totally in charge of turning brother against brother and leveraging ideological differences to cause the [pick your nation] war of 19XX." It's dirty warfare, but in a world where you can't violate a nations sovereignty, annex their castle and force your will upon its people, there really aren't many alternative methods. Edit: typos