You need to pay more attention to the first word in your quotation IF....
He also understood that making military preparations would REDUCE the chance of war and that is what eventually happened when he and Washington took command of the new military establishment France MYSTERIOUSLY decided it was time to remove the danger of war. Particularly since it had failed to elect its ally, Jefferson.
And apparently you are unaware that Jefferson even as President thought war with Spain was inevitable. He was speaking of these preparations as “eventual security against INVASION.” Not to declare war. And “squinting” at South America is hardly a design to invade outside minds poisoned against the man. He had been aiding Miranda’s proposals to separate Spain’s S. American colonies from the mother country NOT planning a US invasion.
The “mad” Hamilton was the fulcrum around which almost all politics of the 1790s turned. He was, indeed, a Man Without Measure as Jefferson complained “a Colossus.” In THAT at least Jefferson told the truth.
You need to pay more attention to the first word in your quotation IF....
Yeah. And considering he was talking about launching a full scale invasion of the western territories by expanding his anti-French animosities to Spain, and perhaps even turning southward to Mexico and South America, that's a pretty damn big IF.
Those letters reveal the unguarded Hamilton speaking to his confidants about his political dream, and that dream entailed provoking a war of continent-wide conquest. How else do you explain Hamilton's outright loathing and furious reaction when Adams appointed Murray as special envoy to France and successfully negotiated a peaceful end to the Quasi War? No sane man could fault Adams for that - only a madman who enjoyed the war and wished for its escalation. And those letters reveal that Hamilton was such a man.
He was speaking of these preparations as “eventual security against INVASION.”
Attained by preemptively invading all of South America? Hell, by that standard I'm surprised Hamilton didn't insist we simply conquer Europe itself and be done with it all, thereby preventing World Wars I & II over a hundred years later in the name of "eventual security."