Adams warned that seeking foreign enemies would entangle America in endless wars.

Evidence

On Independence Day in 1821, John Quincy Adams, then the secretary of state, warned of the dangers of looking for enemies abroad. America, he said, “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” If it were to do so, Adams cautioned, the country “would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1050