A larger naval incident could still end a period of German-American non-belligerency. An ocean liner or battleship is proposed as a more politically consequential target than a destroyer. The reference to a second Lusitania is a hypothetical analogy, not an additional historical sinking. The argument links escalation to the significance attached to a loss and notes that navies also lost destroyers in peacetime accidents.
Notable Point · 1:30:10-1:31:36
An ocean liner or battleship as a possible trigger for war
The counterfactual identifies a politically prominent ship loss as one route from an undeclared conflict to open war.