This may be a hot take, and one that's very biased, but I think people with bad intentions exist, and when they make a move against the interests of the good, we need to both be prepared to and willing to face that evil. This isn't to say that the US hasn't done countless things in the name of this idea that have been misguided at best, but there has been plenty of good things that have came from being a military superpower, and I truly believe WWII is an example of that. The Nazi military complex was incredibly strong, and without an equally strong response from the allies it's hard to see how we would've prevented them from going onto their larger goal of world domination. I don't think the incredible allied response was a bad thing, despite all of the bad things that happened as a part of that pursuing that interest.

In my opinion, we can't unilaterally invest resources otherwise invested in our military without equally opening ourselves and our allies to opportunistic attack.