Any government that is a national-security state needs big official enemies — scary ones, ones that will cause the citizenry to continue supporting not only the continued existence of a national-security state form of government but also ever-growing budgets for it and its army of voracious “defense” contractors.
The World Health Organization was forced to go back to the drawing board after multiple nations and the entire continent of Africa rejected its pandemic treaty power grab in favor of national sovereignty.
America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and partly the poet Homer's land of the Lotus-Eaters.