In Orwell’s novel, as in America’s post-WWII experience, war is not really fought to achieve battlefield objectives. War is not a way to gain territory or capture resources or protect citizens or overthrow the opposing government (though any and all of those things may be the stated objectives for the conflict, and may occur as a by-product of the fighting). For the ruling elite, war is a means of preserving the Status Quo of its own hierarchical power. War is meant to be forever. It is a permanent state of affairs. The enemy is merely a pretext, as the government is actually fighting a war of control against its own people. The external threat only exists as a justification for government policies that would otherwise be intolerable to the average citizen.

Daily, from government and the media, we are fed the following exhortations (just not in such plain terms so as not to scare average people into thinking for themselves): “We must stand united against or enemies, so dissent must be crushed. We can’t have nice things, because we must sacrifice our own wellbeing for the war effort. We must curtail civil liberties to ensure our national security. You can’t be too careful rooting out traitors. We must fund our allies instead of domestic priorities, because of the danger posed by our enemies. We must spend unlimited amounts of borrowed and printed money on ‘Defense’, because our enemies will crush us if we don’t.” https://orthodoxreflections.com/for-america-war-is-peace/