Nobody said that. It’s a bad paraphrase, just like “separation of church and state”. Not all alliances are entangling, which is what the real quote acknowledges.
Washington said in his Fifth Annual Message to Congress that the USA, “if we desire to secure peace ... it must be known that we are at all times ready for war”. And allowing any new “world police” that is bent on imperialistic expansionism to rise on the scene is antithetical to that.
Washington did indeed warn against foreign entanglements special allies and alliances during his Farewell Address.
And he said absolutely nothing about us going around the world looking to be involved in every single war that was out there.
Your Washington quote was an attempt to make it sound like he wanted America to be a warlike nation. He was speaking defensively when he mentioned “ready for war”. He disliked standing armies. He wanted America to be dangerous to attack, not to roam the world looking for fights. He would have been horrified that America was fighting the entire middle east and forming deep friendships with Arab despots and European oligarchs.
Here is some of what he said in his farewell address. And it dovetails in well with all of the founders. All of them warned against foreign, (especially European) entanglements. All of them warned against going abroad looking for dragons to slay.
The saw wars of defense and nothing else as good for America. Our prosperity was their main concern and defense only to the point of ensuring that. They never wanted to spread their political power and influence abroad
“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. “