In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington vehemently exhorted the people of the new American Republic to "Avoid Political Alliance." Key points of his address are as follows:

• The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

• The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy.

• So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.