A philosophy of preventive war will bleed the nation to death. Taken to its logical conclusion we’d end up fighting two thirds of the world. Better to follow the advice of George Washington who said we should keep aloof from foreign strifes.
Interesting point. Washington was a British Army veteran, commander of American forces, President of the new republic, and, renouncing all his offices, returned to his farm even earning the grudging admiration of George III.
So, Washington was pretty much done with empires & imperialism. He saw America as blessed with all the natural resources for peace and prosperity, with no need for expansionist ambitions.
But even in his waning years, Washington must have been aware of the debate between Hamilton’s Federalists and the Antifederalists led by Jefferson. One of their differences concerned foreign entanglements; the former favored strict neutrality in the imminent Anglo-French war and the latter advocated allying with Napoleonic France as a counter to the British Empire (which would come roaring back to our shores anyway).
This debate IMO is academic in the Islamofascist era. We fight them here, we fight them over there, but the civilizational war will go on as long as fourteen centuries of Muslim imperialism are staring down at us through nuclear eyes.