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This essay is adapted from “America’s Rise and Fall Among Nations: Lessons in Statecraft from John Quincy Adams” (Encounter, 288 pages, $30.99).
John Quincy Adams is the font of American geopolitical thought. Today, lesser men fail to grasp his teaching that alignment of interests among nations can only be creatures of time and circumstance.
What were America’s founders and their followers trying to foster and preserve by their conduct among nations? What were they trying to put first? Why did the Progressives turn away from these concerns? What did they put first? How dismissive were they of reality? What have been Progressivism’s effects on how America has fared among nations? How have changes in the world and in America itself made it impossible to continue on the Progressive’s course? How would John Quincy Adams and those following his principles manage America’s present international situation?
By what principles might today’s statesmen put America First?
In America, as everywhere else, a people’s choices and priorities reflect who they are. From the earliest settlements, Americans have thought themselves fortunate that they or their ancestors had distanced themselves from the rest of European civilization—and not just geographically. America was their final destination. They had not come on the way to anywhere else. Few went back. They left old quarrels and did not come to start new ones. They came because they expected America to be different, a nearly empty land where they would have peace, freedom, and the bread that their hands earned. And that is why Americans’ relations with foreigners were always premised on appreciation for what made America different. Putting America First meant more than natural self-interest. It meant putting a better, demonstrably different way of life first. The Americans
The Europeans who had come to America had not been great men—actual or would-be […]
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