George Friedman claims that foreign entanglements were always “inevitable” for the U.S., and he does this by completely mangling the meaning of the word entanglement:

Where Jefferson spoke of entangling alliances, it might be said that no alliances were signed, but alignment was pursued. From the beginning of the American project, entanglement in Europe was inevitable. The republic was born from that entanglement and survived because of the skill and cunning with which the founders managed their entanglement.

If one redefines pursuing any kind of foreign policy that involves diplomatic relations with other governments as “entanglement,” then I suppose entanglements are inevitable for all states, but Friedman knows very well that this isn’t what Jefferson was warning against. When he issued his warning, Jefferson had in mind preserving the neutrality of the U.S. at a time when the major powers of Europe were at war. As far as the wars in Europe were concerned, the U.S. did remain neutral, and continued to be neutral in all subsequent European conflicts for the next century. That obviously didn’t mean that the U.S. never reached agreements or made treaties with other states during that time, but the normal conduct of foreign relations by a neutral power–including waging wars of self-defense–is very different from making security commitments to other states or bringing the country into a foreign war on one side or the other. It is only by deliberately ignoring that Jefferson and Washington were both talking specifically about political and military alliances that Friedman can make his argument. Friedman says that it “is important to distinguish what the founders wished from what they did.” That’s true. It’s also important to describe both accurately and not indulge in misleading revisionism, which is what Friedman has chosen to do.

Friedman further distorts the meaning of “entanglement” by pretending that this includes defending U.S. trading interests. If the U.S. went to war against Tripoli, Friedman wants us to think that this is proof that the U.S. didn’t avoid foreign entanglement. He then says this: “As a result, the United States was fighting in the Middle East by the turn of the 19th century.” I assume Friedman understands that North Africa isn’t part of the Middle East by any remotely accurate definition, but he uses this erroneous description to promote the idea that the U.S. has always been “entangled” in the politics of that region. This isn’t an isolated error, since he writes a little later that it “was Jefferson, after all, who led the country to its first Middle Eastern adventure.” Considering how important Friedman and his colleagues usually claim geography is for understanding international affairs, one would think that he wouldn’t be so careless and sloppy about geographical and historical details, but he is.

The U.S. may be well-served by some of its alliances, or it may not be, but it is simply wrong to say that any of them were or are inevitable because of the need for the U.S. to conduct foreign relations. They’re clearly not the same thing, and it misrepresents over a century of U.S. foreign policy to suggest that they are.