This "change in focus" as you put it.
You see theres one fundamental problem with that, and thats because it was already decided that Bretonia, not Kusari was going to be in this war.
So the dev team had to explain that inconsistency, so they came up with that excuse.
Would suing for peace not be an indespicable thing to do? Seeing as they like going on about honour?
So, then surrendering or running from battle isn't then?
I could list for you all the times throughout history that coups have happened during wars to stop the government from proceeding with the war, but I would run out of room to post, it has happened so many times. There is no inconsistency in that. And by change of focus, I mean the fact that instead of having Kusari rp focus on the Taus and Leeds, as they have for the last 2 versions, which has been very bad for the Blood Dragons in particular, the Kusari rp will be much more about the interactions between the Kusari factions. It gives Kusari players a whole new set of situations to explore with a new government and many new politics. There has basically been a moderate revolution in Kusari, and it will be very fun and interesting to explore how that plays out between the various factions.
To sum up, there is absolutely nothing in the Lore to suggest that this is a situation that couldn't happen. There have been coups in Kusari before, and the last two versions we have seen Samura saddled with more debt and Kishiro moving more into the high profit world of high tech, giving them a significant surplus of cash on hand, the kind of cash that fuels coups. Its not surprising that at Kusari's darkest hour, the government would be most susceptible to to overthrow, which is what happens, and makes complete sense. After the change of power, the new government would have to establish itself as different than the last, the most obvious way is to end the wars Kusari was involved in. If you think this doesn't make sense, you really, really need to learn about history.