but they haven’t at all explained aside from “well Putin will attack NATO” despite them publicly saying numerous times that they have no intention or interest in attacking NATO.

The argument that they would make is that because Putin is a saturday morning cartoon villain, that obviously he is lying and will be staging an invasion of the rest of the world as soon as the Last Bastion of Freedom, Ukraine, falls.

I have talked to people like this. Their understanding of the background of the war is so poor that they see it as nothing besides a land grab. Which would already make no sense. It's impossible to have any kind of real discourse because they believe the only motivation is either more land (for the largest country in the world) or just that "Putin is Evil".

I do think they genuinely hoped to break Russia up at the start of this, but also agree that there are plenty of secondary goals. Making sure Europe doesn't become economically integrated with the east, and funnelling money to the oligarchs who own the war industry are two obvious goals US is currently achieving.