You don’t have to believe it, but NG sending ghosts to Wolves was far less calculating than this. We have people who are dying of boredom, ghosts hit our allies, seemed like a great reason to give people something to do. Plus, Wolves are awesome.
Same with Mongols, them hitting the commies wasn’t something nefarious plan to start a global (since no one wants that which is its own horrible problem) but what they thought at the time was a relatively safe casualty raiding target.
If we wanted to escalate the war we had an easy opportunity to around The Sabcat peace/ghost thing and a separate member of PGS directly hitting Wolves nations. Granted cooler heads prevailed (boo.)
NG hitting UCR was for leverage and to throw off RFI since everyone expected us to decapitate PGS (hence why they all went to PM) and hit GATO. I’d argue it worked and provided everyone the opportunity to negotiate peace (again not necessarily what I wanted but I don’t get to start a war on a whim when I’m not even the head of an alliance anymore.)