We could have had Russia on our side after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Corporate wasn’t certain who the candy date for the next Forever War(TM) adversary would be, so we had to keep Russia and China on the sorta outs if a quick “spend a s-—t load of money on something you don’t intend to win” kinetic situation was needed.
Easy thing for corporate now — the entire world except for a chunk of Europe hates us (and they are starting to get sick our s-—t), so we got no shortage of Forever War candy dates.