Weapons are most definitely the issue. The weapons available determine proper strategy and tactics. You wouldn't (ok, maybe you would, that's your argument, but I wouldn't) use strategy conceived in the time of muskets and smooth bore cannon, in a nuclear age. New weapons call for new ways of thinking about how to fight wars. Change or die. If we follow your ideas we don't change, and we will die. How and why will be something to be dissected by future historians, who no doubt will speak the language of our conquerers.
The subject was meddling in other nations affairs, not tactics. Of course, the available weapons--the firepower, methods of delivery, etc.--will influence battle tactics, etc.. That is hardly an argument for our seeking to confront other powers with high tech weapons, on the other side of the world.
It was a test. Because nativists usually hate free trade, hate foreigners and hate overseas involvement. Certain responses would have told me volumes about your mindset, and whether you fall into the category of people I don't waste my time on, like nativists.
That begs so many questions, makes so many intermediate assumptions as to make you look less than just silly. As a Jeffersonian, I am hardly likely to hate free trade or anyone else. It is entirely out of respect for others that Jefferson recognized the fundamental principal of the Law Of Nations, that each Nation must be the judge of its own affairs. And the term "Nativist," is generally only used by those on the Left who seek new World Orders, and immigration policies that do not consider the compatibility of the immigrants, nor the rights of a nation to its own space & resources.
You go on to pose hypothetical questions, which display a fundamental naivete, simply because they take no account of future variable--always present in any situation--which may not be those that you so simplistically imagine. There are certainly times for us to go to the aid of allies and friends, but each situation--except where we have entered into a treaty commitment--calls for evaluation at the time of action. For example, given the complex of our involvement with Kuwait, I favored the first Bush policy, in going to the rescue of Kuwait in 1991. On the other hand, our meddling in the Serbian Civil War in the late 90s, was an outrage, under principles of the Law of Nations, that governed traditional American thinking.
Your refusal to see that weapons drive strategy and tactics, and attempt to crown philosophical ideas as superior to reality is wrongheaded and dangerous. Obviously you see this differently than I do.
My China hypothetical was attempt to move our discussion into an area I would find interesting: at what point would you be willing to enter into “entangling alliances” and your reasons at that point. Since you decline to respond to it, I have to presume you have no criteria, or at least none that you can articulate. I find this wrongheaded and dangerous as well. And again you see this differently than I do.
I see no need to continue this discussion. Good luck to you in the future.