Confirmed isolationists, and others concerned with United States over-involvement in foreign conflicts, often quote the 1821 admonition of John Quincy Adams that America should “go not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

But that generally wise counsel from the then-secretary of state was offered at a different time, for a different America, confronting a different world. The United States in the early 19th Century was still a fledgling country, not the global superpower it is today. Even if it had wanted to police the world, it lacked the capabilities to undertake such a task.