Their main motivation is and always was to protect shareholder values in a capitalist world. Communism was a huge threat to that so obviously the soviet union was the main enemy.

Now that Russia is capitalist, too, it’s not that much of a threat to the ultra wealthy anymore. In fact getting other countries scared into buying weapons from the US war machine is actually completely in line with their ideology.

Even having a war going on is good for business if the weapons used are American.

Taxpayer money going to private companies that supply material to other countries - just more possibilities to enrich their donors…