It might backfire if he's one of those irredeemable Roman fappers that thinks "casus belli" is based and not a horrifying doctrine, you know, where his side and whatever it does to get ahead is "based." He does seem to be the "Manifest Destiny was cool and good and so was the slave trade because they both elevated primitives out of mud huts" type, especially after I argued once about the blood price of lithium and he countered with something about "mud huts" and "wasted resources" untapped beneath those mud huts that could be used instead "for the mission" .