Marathe & Steeply: Gentle's manufactured ennemi commun
That had nothing to do with the Reconfiguration. The Reconfiguration was self-preservation.
Context
The Reconfiguration reframed as domestic statecraft: Steeply calls it "self-preservation," Marathe calls it Gentle's manufacture of a needed villain — "the hating some other" as the glue "to delay this splitting apart," an "ennemi commun" built to keep a fracturing union together. This is the theme's account of why O.N.A.N. needs Canada as enemy: not territory or waste primarily, but the political utility of a common foe to a polity coming apart. Gentle "correct" that "someone is to blame" — the enemy is real politics, just aimed outward to hide an inward collapse.