In my country it’s a jobs program for low skilled and undereducated workers that the wealthy use to protect and extend their imperial aspirations. Propaganda allows a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class upwards via the military industrial complex under the guise of safety.
The corrupt system is supported by liberals who enjoy the status and privilege that American force projection brings. The domination allowed by the system ensures cheap fuel and trinkets for the trough and has historically propped up the US dollar giving all the participants in the imperial core an outsized quality of life.