Was George Washington's warnings on foreign policy matters to the new nations justified?

Answer 1

Yes and no. It's easy to look back on something someone said in the early 1790s and try to make it a warning or a prediction to future generations. The context is important though: Washington was not specifically being isolationist, or even nationalistic. He was being a realist. The United States was a very new nation, and he was reminding those who would lead the country to focus on making it stable and strong; he believed the best strategy for achieving that was to avoid "foreign entanglements," which could potentially cause America problems.

At that time, the dominant powers were France and England, and he said it was not useful to choose sides or favor one more than the other. Rather, Washington believed a policy of neutrality was best, and he believed in showing good will to all nations, as long as those nations showed the same to the US. So, yes, under those conditions (a new country, new leaders, a military that had just undergone a brutal war for independence), it made perfect sense to avoid "foreign entanglements." But it would not be accurate to apply that strategy to every era, nor would Pres. Washington have expected it. As a military general, he knew conditions could change. But for that time, he felt neutrality in foreign affairs was the most sensible course to pursue.

Answer 2

Yes, very much so. He was right about so much in his observations.