John Quincy Adams and an ‘America First’ Foreign Policy

Democrats and their media allies, neoconservatives, and establishment Republicans deride the notion of an “America First” foreign policy. They distort history to trace the roots of today’s “America First” approach to foreign policy to those groups in the United States...

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Democrats and their media allies, neoconservatives, and establishment Republicans deride the notion of an “America First” foreign policy. They distort history to trace the roots of today’s “America First” approach to foreign policy to those groups in the United States that sought to keep us out of the Second World War — sometimes sounding “pro-Hitler.” In reality, the roots of today’s “America First” approach to foreign policy can be traced back to the founding generation, and specifically to John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams was perhaps our nation’s greatest secretary of state. The son of Revolutionary firebrand and second President of the United States John Adams, John Quincy seemed destined for greatness at a very young age. After serving as secretary to U.S. ministers to France, Great Britain, and Russia, John Quincy studied the Latin and Greek classics and as much history, including Thucydides and Herodotus, as he could fit within his diplomatic work. A new biography by Randall Woods, who teaches history at the University of Arkansas, characterizes John Quincy Adams as a “conservative nationalist,” like his father, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington. When he was named secretary of state by President James Monroe, John Quincy conducted the nation’s foreign policy as a conservative nationalist. Today, we would call it an “America First” foreign policy. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: US vs. China: No Moral Equivalence)

John Quincy Adams helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. This was at a time when the Napoleonic Wars were coming to a close, and Adams understood that Great Britain had more at stake on the European continent than in North America. These were the first stirrings of an entente between the Anglo-Saxon powers who shared a common interest in preventing other European powers from expanding in the Western Hemisphere. John Quincy understood, as George Washington did, that the United States was still a young and relatively weak power whose “manifest destiny” was to expand across the North American continent. As Woods explains, John Quincy “would throughout his public life use [George] Washington as an icon to rally support for his nationalist domestic programs and a foreign policy rooted in continental expansion and non-alignment.”

In the 1790s, John Quincy had observed the skillful diplomacy of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in maintaining America’s neutrality in the Wars of the French Revolution and Empire. Those “America First” statesmen resisted calls for siding with France based on the Treaty of Alliance during the War of Independence. Washington’s Farewell Address counseled his countrymen to avoid getting entangled in Europe’s quarrels, to conduct foreign policy on the basis of interest rather than sentiment, and to have no permanent alliances, instead to rely on temporary alliances that serve U.S. interests.

John Quincy also observed the Jefferson and Madison administrations foolhardy diplomacy that neglected our defenses while nearly getting us into war with Britain and France at the same time. John Quincy understood that America was safer when the European balance of power kept would-be aggressors in check. Woods notes that Adams understood that the Russian autocrat Alexander I was an essential player in defeating Napoleon and reestablishing the European balance of power. It was not a matter of democracy versus autocracy; it was about strengthening U.S. national security by whatever means necessary, even if that meant establishing good relations with autocrats.

The Congress of Vienna reestablished the European balance of power. John Quincy Adams, the new minister to Great Britain, now looked to reestablish better relations with our recent foe in the War of 1812. “During 1815 and 1816,” Woods writes, “[British Foreign Secretary] Castlereagh and Adams negotiated almost continuously on matters of mutual interest to their two countries.” The incoming President James Monroe in 1917 named Adams secretary of state.

Although Adams would later be selected President by the House of Representatives in 1824 and would serve one mediocre term, it was as Monroe’s secretary of state that Adams left his mark on American foreign policy. And it was very much an “America First” approach to foreign policy. He negotiated the Convention of 1818 which settled the northwest boundary between Great Britain and the United States. He negotiated the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, by which the U.S. acquired Florida. Most important, he formulated the Monroe Doctrine which warned Europe’s great powers against future colonization in the Western Hemisphere. (READ MORE: Neocons Slander the American Right)

The late, great Angelo Codevilla subtitled his last book “Lessons in Statecraft from John Quincy Adams.” Codevilla lauded Adams’ “America First” approach to foreign policy and urged our leaders to look to Adams (and Washington and Hamilton) for guidance on how to navigate the geopolitics of the 21st century. Pat Buchanan also lauded Adams in his insightful book A Republic Not An Empire. What Woods calls “conservative nationalism” is what guided American foreign policy until the progressive era when the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts and their progressive successors attempted to remake the world in America’s image. It was and is a fool’s errand to believe that the United States should conduct foreign policy with the betterment of “mankind” as our first priority. The globalists among us — and that includes what’s left of the neoconservatives in this country — boastfully ignore the wise counsel of John Quincy Adams that America should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, and that while we are the well-wisher of freedom and liberty to all, we are the guarantor only of our own.

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