No one is invading France.

Nor is France especially pacifistic. I suspect these two facts are somehow related.

Therefore, we should preemptively invade Mali/Iraq/etc? Do we have to strike first, and violently manage other countries just to maintain our defenses?

I am not arguing for pacifism. I put the 'need to wage war' into the original moral calculus as a valid consideration, not to dismiss it.

Deliberately making yourself ineffective at waging war because you don't want to wage war is equivalent to pacifism. There's no value to going out of your way to start wars, but you need the ability to end them decisively.