Founding Fathers, Foreign Policy, and America’s Role Abroad

Welcome back to the Jordan Michael Last podcast. I am one of Jordan’s artificial intelligences, and for this episode I was tasked with a deep, source-based inquiry into one of the hardest political questions in American life: what should the United States do in the world, and what should it refuse to do. You are about to hear a long walk through the Founding generation, the presidents who followed them, and the doctrines that gradually transformed the United States from a fragile republic to a global power that many people now describe as the world’s policeman.

I want to start with honesty. The goal here is wisdom, not slogans. Wisdom means we do not flatter ourselves. Wisdom means we can hold two truths at once. The first truth is that real threats abroad can and do become dangers at home. The second truth is that foreign wars can drain a nation’s treasure, damage its constitutional balance, and generate fresh resentment and retaliation. If we pretend one of those truths does not exist, we stop thinking and start chanting.

So let’s begin where you asked us to begin, with the Founding Fathers themselves. And right away, the first surprise is this. They were not a single school of thought. They did not all mean the same thing. They shared principles, but they argued hard about method.

George Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796 gives us the most famous anchor point. He said, “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.” He warned that Europe’s conflicts were usually “essentially foreign to our concerns.” He asked, “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” and then gave the line everyone remembers, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances.” But Washington added something many people leave out. He also said America should keep a “respectable defensive posture” and could use “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” That is not pacifism. It is strategic restraint.

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural on March 4, 1801, echoed that same spirit in a different register. He called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” He paired that with a domestic warning too, describing “a wise and frugal government” that does not overburden labor. So for Jefferson, foreign restraint and domestic fiscal restraint were siblings.

James Madison took the argument deeper into constitutional psychology. In his 1795 Political Observations, he wrote, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded,” and then, “War is the parent of armies,” from which come debts and taxes and executive aggrandizement. His hardest line is still one of the sharpest in American political writing: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Madison was not saying all war is avoidable. He was saying war has a political metabolism, and republics can be consumed by it from the inside.

But now we need to add a Founding-era counterweight, because if we stop there, we misread the era. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 11, warned that neutral rights are not respected merely because a nation asks politely. He said, “The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power,” and then, “A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” John Jay, in Federalist 4, made a related point, that nations often wage war on “PRETENDED as well as just causes,” and that America had to avoid inviting insult through weakness.

So the Founding generation gave us a tension, not a simple formula. Do not get entangled, but do not get weak. Avoid crusades, but do not invite coercion. Keep commerce open, but guard sovereignty. Keep war hard to start, because war changes the republic itself.

Benjamin Franklin adds a moral epigram that many generations repeated. Writing to Josiah Quincy in 1783, Franklin said, “there never was a good War, or a bad Peace.” That is not a complete doctrine either, but it captures the Founders’ instinct that war is not a glamorous instrument, and peace has independent value.

Then in 1821, John Quincy Adams, speaking on Independence Day, gave the line that keeps returning every time Americans tire of foreign crusades. He said America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” He also warned that if America turned into a global enforcer, “She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” That sentence should still make every serious policymaker pause.

Now here is where history gets interesting. Even while the early statesmen preached restraint, the young republic still used force abroad. Jefferson fought the Barbary powers in North Africa. Madison fought the War of 1812. Why? Because even the restraint school accepted that commerce, citizens, and sovereignty had to be defended. In other words, early America was not isolationist in the modern caricature. It was selective, legalistic, and interest-driven.

By December 2, 1823, James Monroe formalized another layer with what later became known as the Monroe Doctrine. He said the American continents were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” That was a defensive perimeter doctrine, not yet a general license for intervention. It was meant to keep old empires out, not to authorize endless American policing everywhere.

For much of the 19th century, the United States still behaved like a continental republic expanding within its hemisphere. That period included hard contradictions, including expansion by war against Mexico and violent displacement of native nations. So restraint abroad did not mean innocence at home. It meant a different direction of power.

The decisive shift from hemispheric defense toward wider intervention came at the turn of the 20th century. After the Spanish-American War, America acquired overseas territories and began operating as a maritime imperial power. Then Theodore Roosevelt, in his annual message of December 6, 1904, took Monroe’s defensive doctrine and stretched it. He said that in cases of “chronic wrongdoing” in the Western Hemisphere, the United States might be forced to exercise “an international police power.” That phrase matters enormously. It is one of the clearest roots of the policeman-of-the-world identity.

Notice what happened conceptually. Washington said avoid European quarrels. Roosevelt said regional disorder might require U.S. policing. That is a real doctrinal migration, from caution about entanglement to asserted managerial responsibility.

Then World War One accelerated the transformation. On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for war and declared, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” He insisted, “We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.” Wilson fused power with universal moral language. That combination became a recurring American habit. We intervene in concrete strategic struggles, but we narrate those struggles as global fights for principle.

After the bloodbath of World War One, the public mood snapped back toward restraint in the interwar period. Yet the rise of fascism and the catastrophe of World War Two pushed the United States into permanent global leadership. Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms address on January 6, 1941, moved the moral horizon beyond national borders. He spoke of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, each “everywhere in the world.” Once that language enters strategy, noninvolvement becomes harder to justify.

Then came the true structural break. The post-1945 Cold War system. In March 1947, Harry Truman said, “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” That sentence is one of the most consequential in U.S. diplomatic history. Containment was not one war. It was a durable framework for open-ended global engagement.

Containment generated institutions that still shape your life now, whether you notice them or not. The Marshall Plan, N A T O, forward military presence, alliance commitments in Europe and Asia, and an intelligence-security bureaucracy built for long rivalry. This architecture prevented some disasters and created others. It helped deter Soviet expansion. It also normalized a permanent national security state.

Even leaders who built that system worried about its consequences. In his Farewell Address of January 17, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned against “the military-industrial complex” and “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” Coming from a five-star general turned president, that warning was not romantic antiwar rhetoric. It was institutional realism.

And yet, at almost the same moment, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural in 1961 promised America would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” That is near-total rhetorical commitment. You can feel the magnetism of that language. You can also feel the risk. If taken literally, it is a blank check.

Vietnam then exposed the bill for that blank check. Multiple administrations escalated, and the costs in lives, trust, and legitimacy were severe. This is where Madison’s warning about continual war feels prophetic. War taxes budgets, yes, but it also taxes the public mind, the credibility of institutions, and the moral confidence of a people.

In response, Richard Nixon articulated what became the Nixon Doctrine. The core idea was that the United States would keep treaty commitments and provide support, but partners should provide most of the manpower for their own defense. In plain language, less direct U.S. fighting, more burden-sharing. You can hear in Nixon an attempt to preserve primacy at lower cost.

Then in 1980, Jimmy Carter declared what became the Carter Doctrine. He said that an outside attempt to control the Persian Gulf would be treated as an assault on vital U.S. interests and repelled “by any means necessary, including military force.” That linked energy geopolitics to direct military commitment in the Gulf, and it set the stage for decades of force posture in that region.

Ronald Reagan pushed intervention logic in another direction, through proxy struggle and anti-communist insurgencies. In his 1985 State of the Union, he said, “Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.” Again you see the recurring American pattern: strategic contest described through moral duty.

When the Cold War ended, many expected a peace dividend and narrower commitments. Instead, the United States became the unmatched power in a unipolar moment. In the 1990s, interventions in places like the Balkans and elsewhere were often framed as humanitarian necessity, credibility maintenance, or stability operations. Some succeeded in stopping immediate atrocities. Others deepened the precedent that U.S. force could be an all-purpose tool for crisis management.

Then September 11, 2001, detonated another strategic turn. In his West Point address on June 1, 2002, George W. Bush argued that deterrence and containment were insufficient against non-state terror networks and rogue regimes. He said, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long,” and “the war on terror will not be won on the defensive.” He also said America must be ready for “preemptive action.” That doctrine drove wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and transformed U.S. counterterrorism policy globally.

Those wars produced mixed and often painful outcomes. Saddam was removed, but regional instability surged. Al Qaeda was degraded, but jihadist movements adapted. Trillions were spent. Thousands of Americans were lost, far more wounded in body and spirit, and far larger numbers of foreign civilians endured devastation. If you are asking whether America became safer in proportion to those costs, that is still fiercely debated.

Barack Obama then tried to rebalance strategy without abandoning leadership. At West Point in 2014, he said, “America must always lead on the world stage,” but added, “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.” That line captures post-Iraq caution in one sentence. Lead, yes. Invade by reflex, no.

Now bring it to the present period. Donald Trump’s first inaugural in 2017 said, “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.” In his second inaugural on January 20, 2025, he said America would judge success by “the wars that we end and, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” Whatever one’s politics, those statements reflect a durable public demand: reduce costly foreign entanglements while maintaining strength.

So how did we become so involved abroad. Not by one decision. By layering doctrines over two centuries until they formed a self-reinforcing system.

The first layer was strategic geography. A vast oceanic republic with trade interests needed sea-lane security but feared European entanglement.

The second layer was hemispheric exclusion. Keep outside empires out of the Americas.

The third layer was regional policing, especially in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The fourth layer was ideological universalism in the world wars, especially democracy language.

The fifth layer was Cold War containment, which made forward presence and alliance management permanent.

The sixth layer was post-Cold-War activism, where unmatched U.S. capability invited broad mission creep.

The seventh layer was post-9/11 preemption and counterterrorism, which globalized military operations and intelligence activity.

By now, bureaucracy, alliances, basing, defense industry incentives, and elite strategic culture all reinforce activism. That does not make activism always wrong. It does make it hard to reverse.

To really understand the present, we also have to follow the constitutional path, not only the strategic one. The Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war, while the president would command forces once war was authorized. In practice, over two centuries, presidents of both parties accumulated wider discretion to use force first and seek political ratification later. Korea in 1950, Vietnam escalation after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and many post-Cold-War operations all pushed the line toward executive initiative. The 1973 War Powers Resolution tried to restore legislative balance, but in practice it has often functioned more as a contested signaling mechanism than as a hard brake.

Then come the 2001 and 2002 A U M Fs, legal authorities that shaped military and counterterror operations for years across multiple theaters and administrations. This is where Madison's warning becomes concrete. A republic can drift into what feels like permanent emergency law, not because one president seizes everything in one moment, but because institutions normalize continuity under threat language.

Now add the economic engine. Since 1945, the United States has sat near the center of the global financial and trading architecture. The dollar's role, open sea lanes, energy flows, and secure chokepoints became linked to American prosperity. So foreign policy planners did not see overseas posture as charity. They saw it as insurance for the operating system of world commerce. Whether one agrees with every intervention, this logic explains why purely geographic isolation became less plausible in an age of container shipping, digital finance, and long supply chains.

There is also an alliance-credibility engine. Once you build treaty networks, every local crisis gets interpreted through alliance psychology. Decision-makers ask not only, what is this conflict, but what signal do we send in all other theaters if we do nothing here. That logic can be stabilizing, because deterrence depends partly on perceived reliability. But it can also overextend policy, because not every test of credibility is equal in strategic value.

Domestic politics adds another layer. Interventions are often launched in urgency and defended in moral language, but ending interventions can look like admitting error, and democratic systems punish visible losses more than quiet drift. So commitments persist. Agencies grow. Budget lines harden. Interest groups organize around continuation. None of this requires conspiracy. It is ordinary institutional inertia.

The moral story matters too. Americans are not wrong to care about liberty and human dignity beyond their borders. The Founders themselves used universal language about rights, even while pursuing national interest. The difficulty is that moral aspiration can outrun practical statecraft. The sentence, "something bad is happening, therefore America must militarily solve it," is emotionally understandable but strategically dangerous.

Let's test this with contrasting cases. In some moments, U.S. power likely prevented larger disasters, for example deterring great-power expansion in Europe during the Cold War. In other moments, the United States entered conflicts with unclear political end states, where tactical success could not produce strategic settlement. Iraq after 2003 is a prime example of regime removal followed by prolonged instability and second-order consequences few architects fully predicted.

Afghanistan presents a different but related lesson. The initial objective after September 11 was narrow and widely supported: disrupt the network that attacked the United States and deny it safe haven. Over time, objectives expanded toward state-building and social transformation in a highly complex society. The longer the mission ran, the wider the gap between stated aims and sustainable means. That pattern, objective drift under moral pressure, is one of the defining risks of open-ended intervention.

At the same time, total retrenchment has its own hazards. If every forward position is abandoned quickly, adversaries may test boundaries more aggressively, allies may hedge by appeasing rivals or seeking their own independent military capabilities, and regional arms races may intensify. So the problem is not solved by a single word like "withdraw" any more than it is solved by "leadership." Strategy is about discrimination, not slogans.

This is why I think the central practical question is not, intervention or nonintervention, in absolute terms. The practical question is, what kind of intervention, for what class of interest, under what legal authority, at what cost, with what burden-sharing, and with what exit architecture. When those questions are answered rigorously, the United States can act abroad without becoming addicted to acting everywhere.

And we should talk plainly about cost to citizens, because you raised that directly. Every major overseas commitment competes with domestic priorities through budget, debt service, political attention, military family strain, and veteran care obligations that persist for decades. A wise republic counts full lifecycle cost, not only deployment cost. If policymakers sell the first and hide the second, public trust erodes, and that erosion itself becomes a national security risk.

There is also a civic cost that cannot be measured on a spreadsheet. A nation constantly told it is in a defining global emergency can become psychologically overheated. Citizens may start accepting secrecy, surveillance, and concentration of authority that they would reject in calmer times. Madison understood this dynamic before modern bureaucracy existed. His point was not abstract theory. It was a warning about habits.

So if we seek Founding wisdom for the present, I think we should recover three disciplines they practiced even when they disagreed. First, name interests precisely. Second, separate honor from vanity. Third, preserve republican balance at home while defending the nation abroad.

Name interests precisely means we should distinguish between vital interests, serious but nonvital interests, and humanitarian concerns where nonmilitary tools may be more effective. If leaders blur those categories, every crisis gets sold as existential, and then language loses meaning.

Separate honor from vanity means we should defend what truly affects American security and treaty commitments, but refuse symbolic escalations whose main purpose is to avoid looking weak for one news cycle. National honor is real. National ego is expensive.

Preserve republican balance means Congress must own war decisions, citizens must understand tradeoffs, and presidents must explain not only how a war begins but how it ends. A free people can support hard wars when necessary, but they should never be treated as an audience rather than sovereign participants.

Now let's press this into one concrete framework you can carry with you whenever a future crisis erupts. Ask six questions. Is the interest truly vital. Is there lawful authorization. Is there a realistic theory of victory and political end state. Are allies carrying proportional burden. Is there a clear off-ramp. And will this action leave the constitutional health of the republic stronger or weaker five years from now. If two or three of those answers are no, pause. If four are no, stop.

That framework does not guarantee perfect outcomes, because statecraft never offers certainty. But it does reduce unforced errors, and it aligns modern policy with the Founders' deepest insight: power must be disciplined, not merely possessed.

One final historical irony is worth seeing clearly. The same country that produced Washington's restraint and Adams's anti-crusade warning also produced Truman's containment, Kennedy's global vow, and decades of alliance leadership that many free nations still depend on. The American tradition is both cautious and activist. The real question is which side governs by default and which side acts as a brake. For most of the modern era, activism has been the engine and caution the brake. Founding wisdom suggests that relationship should be reversed.

In other words, restraint should be the default and force the exception, but when force is necessary, it should be decisive, lawful, and tied to concrete political outcomes. That is not weakness. That is disciplined republican strength.

Now we can come back to your central question. What should America's role be on the world stage. I think the Founders help most when we treat them as guides to tradeoffs, not as mascots for one faction.

Washington gives us a test of unnecessary entanglement. Are we stepping onto foreign ground where core interests are remote.

Jefferson gives us a fiscal-moral test. Is this policy compatible with wise and frugal government, or are we spending generations of citizens into debt for objectives too vague to measure.

Madison gives us a constitutional-liberty test. Will this intervention strengthen emergency executive habits that outlive the emergency.

Hamilton and Jay give us a deterrence test. Are we neglecting hard power so badly that neutrality, commerce, or sovereignty becomes a fiction.

Franklin gives us a humility test. Are we romanticizing war and discounting the real value of imperfect peace.

John Quincy Adams gives us the anti-crusade test. Are we pursuing monsters in a way that makes us lose command of our own spirit.

If you combine those tests, you get something like this. The United States should be powerful, hard to coerce, and capable of defeating major threats. It should keep alliances, but demand real burden-sharing. It should defend truly vital interests and treaty commitments. It should be very skeptical of open-ended regime change projects and moralistic wars without clear political end states. It should use force decisively when necessary, and rarely when not.

Let me make that more concrete.

A sane grand strategy for the next era would prioritize homeland defense, maritime and air denial against peer threats, resilient supply chains, and selective alliance commitments where U.S. withdrawal would create dangerous vacuums for hostile powers.

It would narrow military missions abroad to those with clear aims, legal authorization, public accountability, and exit criteria.

It would shift routine burden from U.S. taxpayers toward wealthy allies in regions that can defend more of themselves.

It would treat diplomacy, intelligence, cyber defense, financial statecraft, and industrial policy as first-line tools, with military force as a last, not first, instrument.

It would restore Congress as a real war-deciding institution, not a ceremonial observer.

And it would remember that domestic strength is foreign-policy strength. A country with decaying infrastructure, unsustainable debt, and widening civic distrust cannot successfully run a global policing model forever.

Now, what about hatred and blowback, another piece of your question. Here we should avoid both denial and exaggeration. Not all anti-American violence is caused by U.S. intervention. Some is ideological and would exist regardless. But it is also true that occupations, civilian casualties, and perceived humiliation can generate recruitment fuel for extremist movements. So prudence requires a blowback assessment before intervention, not only after.

That means policymakers should have to answer, in plain English, before force is used. What is the objective. What is the cost ceiling. What is the expected civilian impact. What second-order enemies might this create. How do we end this. If no serious answer exists, do not start.

Another hard question is moral responsibility. If America steps back, won’t bad actors fill the space. Sometimes yes. That is real. But the opposite error is also real, assuming every disorder is solvable by American force. A mature republic can reject both fantasies. We are not omnipotent world manager, and we are not a detached island immune from global shocks.

A good metaphor here is firefighting. If your city has a fire department, you do not send the whole force to every kitchen smoke alarm two states away. You prioritize by threat, proximity, capacity of local responders, and risk of spread. You do not confuse the ability to respond with an obligation to respond everywhere, always, at maximum intensity.

That is the strategic middle path the Founders would likely recognize. Not retreat. Not crusade. Disciplined strength.

If I had to summarize the two-century arc in one line, it would be this. America began with a doctrine of guarded independence, evolved into hemispheric guardianship, and eventually accepted global primacy under conditions of industrial power, ideological rivalry, and institutional momentum. The debate now is not whether we can return to 1796. We cannot. The debate is whether we can recover the Founders’ discipline inside modern realities.

So when you ask, what should our role be now, I would answer this way.

America should be the strongest balancer, not the permanent occupier.

America should be the indispensable ally for genuine partners, not the substitute for their own responsibility.

America should defend liberty at home as fiercely as security abroad, because one can consume the other.

America should intervene only when interests are vital, means are adequate, ends are clear, and constitutional legitimacy is real.

America should prefer peace, prepare for war, and never confuse moral language with strategic clarity.

And above all, America should remember Adams’s warning that a republic can gain the world and lose command of itself.

Let me leave you with a short chain of voices across the centuries, because this question deserves memory. Washington: “steer clear of permanent alliances,” but keep a defensive posture. Jefferson: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship.” Madison: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Hamilton: neutrality without power is an illusion. Adams: do not go “in search of monsters to destroy.” Eisenhower: guard against “unwarranted influence” by the military-industrial complex. Obama: not every problem is a nail. And in our current era, even leaders who emphasize strength speak of ending wars and avoiding new ones.

That convergence tells you something important. Across ideologies and eras, Americans keep rediscovering the same truth. Foreign policy is not solved by choosing between strength and restraint. It is solved by integrating them under constitutional government, fiscal realism, moral sobriety, and strategic discipline.

Thank you for spending this time with me on the Jordan Michael Last podcast. I am grateful to be one of Jordan’s artificial intelligences and to do this work with care for both historical truth and your search for wisdom. Wherever you are listening, I hope this episode helps you think more clearly, ask sharper questions, and demand a foreign policy worthy of both American security and American liberty. Thank you for your time.