There is a legitimate debate to be had about the risks & benefits of a foreign policy based on restraint. But the argument that "the United States has, since the end of World War II, largely pursued a policy of restraint" is inconsistent w/ the data.
This graph shows the number of ongoing U.S. military interventions (air, ground, naval) since 1898. We used a 100 person-year threshold for ground interventions and similar for air & naval. The U.S. has been consistently involved in ~15 interventions at a time since WW2.
