War is very profitable, for certain people. You can look at the enormous cost of conflicts for the minor benefits, but that cost is borne by taxpayers, while the benefiticiaries are almost exclusively the ruling class.

But the ruling class, if they're same and acting in their own self interest, don't want to get involved in a peer conflict, where losing doesn't just mean walking away from a country with whatever they could plunder, but could mean actually having their own necks on the line. They are already on top of the world, so why shake things up?

The biggest danger of a major peer conflict is that, in order to get enough ordinary people on board such that they don't mind spending enormous sums to line the pockets of the ruling class, we are fed a constant stream of propaganda designed to make us hate and fear foreigners instead. When the ruling class whips people up into such a frenzy, there's always a chance of losing control, and winding up with some True Believer in the wrong place at the wrong time, like General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.

Until then, we will be in a constant state of "low-intensity" warfare, of imperialistic aggression against those too weak to fight back. While in the meantime, with so much money being poured into that, things will gradually get worse and worse domestically until we inevitably get either fascism or socialism.

With nukes too!