America Firstism from a Developmental Perspective

Abstract

America Firstism is a political idea that, I argue, dates to the 1919–20 Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles. I recount that debate with the goal of demonstrating that the founders of America Firstism drew key elements of this idea from those places where durable features of the domestic political order clashed with the imperatives of the international system envisioned by the treaty’s advocates. America Firstism, I claim, must be seen as a response to institutional conflict between domestic and international orders. One way to understand America Firstism’s recurrence over the intervening century is by considering its origins in this institutional conflict.