(1) It did not begin with Wilson. It began with Teddy Roosevelt and his Great White Fleet in 1907 - a deliberate show of American naval strength and of the USA's ability to project military power worldwide.
(2) Roosevelt did not do this just to show off, in some kind of vacuum. He did this because The Great Race had ended and France as well as Britain had huge colonial empires - empires supported by powerful navies. Moreover, both navies had an aggressive new competitor in Imperial Germany.
America was now confronted with three proto-superpowers and could not afford to isolate itself.
(3) Wilson did not enter World War I because America was immediately threatened or because he just felt like engaging in adventurism and meddling abroad. He entered WWI because he wanted England and France to win and Germany to lose, knowing that if Germany won there would be only one power besides the US, not 3 - and that one remaining power would be a power that America had no historic alliance or ties with.
(4) Buchanan does not seem to realize that having no global presence and backing down from every confrontation invites more problems for the US in the long term than engagement.
A country that will not stand up for its friends will not stand up for itself - isolationism is weakness, not strength. It signals cowardice and vulnerability.
(5) We can afford to project power globally - it's a far more essential expenditure for our national survival than the crippling load of entitlements we pay.
We need aircraft carriers more than we need Social Security.
It is so easy to spend other people's money isn't it? Please keep your hands out of my wallet. If you want to spend your own money to pay for policing the world on the other hand, of course, you are free to do so. Deal?
Not to mention the Germans' nearer-term provocations such as a return to unrestricted submarine warfare, and the Zimmerman note that promised aid to Mexico if they invaded the US....
A side note on #3:
America was threatened. The Zimmerman telegram was Germany’s offer to Mexico to invade America with their support should the US enter the war. They would reclaim territory lost in the Mexican/American war. This isn’t as silly as it sounds today because Mexico’s military was bigger than ours at the time. With German military aid it was not an outlandish idea.
However, Mexico passed. What they knew, and Germany didn’t figure in, was the the Second Amendment. That meant every armed American would be gunning for them. We’d been to Mexico City before, and they remembered that far more than the lost territory they never really governed in the first place.
that’s a very interesting reasoning about why wilson got involved in wwi against the wishes of the people
Wilson also repeatedly warned that America would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, as it was in violation to American ideas of human rights. Wilson was under great pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German "piracy" and Wilson's cowardice.
In January 1917, Germany announced it would destroy all ships heading to Britain. Although Wilson broke off diplomatic ties with Germany, he still hoped to avert war by arming merchant vessels as a deterrent. Nevertheless, Germany began sinking American ships immediately.
In February 1917, British intelligence gave the United States government a decoded telegram from Germany's foreign minister, Arthur Zimmerman that had been intercepted en route to his ambassador to Mexico.
The Zimmerman Telegram The Zimmerman Telegram authorized the ambassador to offer Mexico the portions of the Southwest it had lost to the United States in the 1840s if it joined the Central Powers. However, because Wilson had run for re-election in 1916 on a very popular promise to keep the United States out of the European war, he had to handle the telegram very carefully.
Wilson did not publicize it at first, only releasing the message to the press in March after weeks of German attacks on American ships had turned public sentiment toward joining the Allies. On 2 April 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war and four days later all but six senators and fifty representatives voted for a war resolution. The Selective Service Act that was passed the following month, along with an extraordinary number of volunteers, built up the army from less than 250,000 to four million over the course of the conflict. General John Pershing was appointed head of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) and led the first troops to France On April 6th 1917, America declared war on Germany