I think that's unfortunately just the first order aim. The second order is to provoke an even more extreme reaction from the other side which drives wedges and divisions where there were none (or were manageable). Pretty soon everyone is at war.

Not for very long, though, if by "war" you mean war, rather than the sort of half-hearted low-intensity brushfire nonsense of which we've seen so much out of US policymakers for the last couple of decades.