“the US can’t prevail via warfare”
Why not?
I think it more like mass denial, Europe and half the US including Rice are infected with the disease. It could be fatal.
“Perhaps there’s been a conclusion reached...”
If that is the case, then I doubt that it is admin-wide. And it could be just a fiction, a piece of raw meat to feed to the cannon fodder we’ve been slaughtering without mercy for the past five and a half years.