The Trump administration’s greatest achievements were in foreign policy. Though manifested by presidential gut instinct, rather than bureaucratic mastery, ‘America First’ as practiced was the appropriate response to America’s shrinking margin for geopolitical error: open an exit from Afghanistan; avoid squandering resources and attention on new conflicts of the periphery; punish free-riding allies; focus on competition with China; and seek deals with America’s traditional adversaries. Donald Trump was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to ensnare the US in a new overseas conflict.

Some America First policies outlived Trump's first term. President Joe Biden went through with our overdue exit from Afghanistan. The focus on China remained. But, just six months on from the evacuation of Kabul, his administration energetically joined what has become a proxy war of attrition over Ukraine, reportedly ignoring diplomatic opportunities which could have shortened the conflict. It continues at unjustifiable cost to Ukrainians, the US treasury and arsenal, and prospects for strategic stability. Along with incoherent and destructive efforts to manage the crisis in the Levant, the White House has proven itself to be at the mercy of events and unable to prioritize. Administration officials insisted they could “walk and chew gum at the same time,” but all they really showed is that fiascos are easy if you are strategically blindfolded.

America First, Can It Last? 

In the Republican Party, ‘America First’ became a matter of sloganeering. Every candidate in the primary field used the phrase to promote their foreign policy preferences. The failure of these challengers and President Trump's choice of JD Vance to be his running mate indicates there is a strong constituency for turning the page on the GOP's old interventionist foreign policy consensus.

Still, it remains uncertain whether the America First intuition of unilateral moderation can make the jump from mood to tradition. Some conservative analysts want to restore George W. Bush’s foreign policy, only this time with America First window dressing. But defaulting to the imperial definition of US interests propagated by the Democratic Party would court disaster: at the ballot box, it would fail to command the loyalty of the GOP base; internationally, it would overcommit America’s scarce resources to flashpoints in which she has little direct stake. The GOP needs an America First foreign policy platform, not just a slogan.

The foundation of that platform should be acceptance of tradeoffs: between home and abroad, and between competing international priorities. In this century the US is not powerful enough to keep the republic free and prosperous while simultaneously guaranteeing regional orders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The America First platform recognizes that America is endangered by the risk of physical damage from conflict over distant questions, by fiscal and social damage done by the diversion of its blood and treasure to wars of choice, and by the mass violation of its borders by lawless migrant flows.

America First focuses scarce resources on international commitments sufficient to protect America and avoids risk-taking for luxury goals distantly related to the security needs of the American people. It is attentive to power balances in Europe and Asia, but rejects the de facto use-of-force heuristic of the foreign policy elite: reflexive defense of the global status quo. That approach will exhaust us and leave us in a weaker position to defend America when it really counts. Geographic remoteness and nuclear weapons afford us a huge degree of protection from breakdowns in Eurasia. We have the privilege to wait and see—and we should use it.

Foreign policy sufficiency begins in the Western Hemisphere. The Biden-era surge in illegal immigration has disrupted daily life across the country, increased our vulnerability to terrorist attack, and discredited legal pathways to residency. The administration has tended to treat this as a distraction, reacting only belatedly as the issue has threatened Vice President Harris's electoral prospects. America First defines the border as a core national security priority—one requiring new deterrent policies and completion of the wall.

America First emphasizes that the absence of geopolitical rivalry in the Americas is vital to US safety and international freedom of action. Geopolitical rivals now have greater resources to encroach on the Western Hemisphere, and America’s forward-leaning policies in post-Soviet Europe and the Indo-Pacific incentivize them to do so. The America First platform should restore the Monroe Doctrine as the irreducible red line of US security, taking it back to its dignified roots as a statement of defense and diplomacy, rather than as a license for military intervention. The doctrine is a shield, not a lance. In the century ahead we will need it to signal, bargain, and deter in defense of the republic.

Putting America First means ending our costly pursuit of luxury goals in the Middle East. America's shrinking margin for geopolitical error means that continuing deep engagement there directly trades off against more important priorities in Asia and conserving national resources for the turbulent century ahead. The US has three important, but not vital, Middle Eastern interests: ensuring that no local or external power dominates the region, stabilizing its energy flows, and preventing terrorist attacks on Americans. A small regional air and naval contingent linked to long-range strike capabilities is sufficient for these purposes. Our vulnerable ground deployments in Iraq and Syria should be withdrawn. The US has an interest blocking Iranian ambitions, but not to the point of a war with Tehran. It should rely on the capable network of partnerships solidified by the Abraham Accords to do the balancing. Successfully deprioritizing the Middle East will require flexibility to tilt as conditions require. Local partners like Israel and Saudi Arabia should remain partners, not become Article 5 allies. They should not have the presumption of reflexive American support. When they adopt policies that harm US interests, we should not be shy about imposing costs on them.

The Ukraine Factor 

In Ukraine it is time for talks, not ideological wishcasting. The war is stalemated and will only end or pause through negotiations. The Biden administration policy of sending weapons without conditioning them on Ukrainian willingness to negotiate subordinates US interests to President Zelensky’s. The war’s continuation and expansion into Russia involves a persistent risk of nuclear escalation from which the American homeland is not immune. It has severely damaged prospects for a sustainable European settlement and deepened Europe’s dependence on the US in an era when our first-rank geopolitical challenges are in Asia. It has also strengthened the Sino-Russian partnership—the international combination with the greatest capacity to threaten US interests—into a more cohesive entente.

The US interest in having the war end and not restart greatly outweighs its interests in the eventual location of the Russia-Ukraine border or inflicting further costs on Russia. America First draws the prudent conclusion. Wielding its considerable military and economic leverage, the US should attempt to bring the combatants and key European states into sustained talks on a ceasefire and final status issues such as Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment and reconstruction. The relative weakness of US interests in the issues which sparked the war puts a premium on sufficiency in shaping US goals. An America First negotiating position should be willing to accept a deal along the lines of the March 2022 Istanbul Communique: Ukrainian neutrality, commitments against Ukraine’s membership in NATO, limits on Ukraine’s military relationship with the West, and a formula of multilateral security guarantees to Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine also obscures a decisive fact: the major problem of European security is now solved from the standpoint of vital US interests. Today, no country can hope to bid for European hegemony—not even Russia at its prewar strength. The European core commands nuclear weapons and has an economy six times the size of Russia’s. It is absurd for Americans to run the risk of a two-front war when one of the fronts can be handled by the Europeans. The US, facing intensifying security demands in Asia, should force Europe to take the reins. The America First platform should lay on the pressure for greater European security expenditure and convene talks on creating a Europeanized regional security architecture.

The way there runs through France, the only European state with the resources, confidence and ambition to organize and lead Europe as a third pole. The next GOP president should renew the old Franco-American partnership as a bridgehead for transitioning European security responsibilities from American to European leadership. The transition should be cooperative and phased, building towards an end state in which Europe can secure itself against all threats short of total great power war. To consolidate this process, the US should veto further NATO expansion. The nuclear umbrella and intelligence sharing should be kept in place for now, but the US should consider withdrawing from NATO’s unified command structure to encourage European autonomy. American foreign policy will be more disciplined, transatlantic ties more mature, and the international order more resilient if the major questions of European security are answered by the Europeans themselves.

The Asia Challenge 

The rise of China is America’s most demanding grand strategic problem, but it is neither intractable, nor an emergency. Though a potent technological competitor and espionage threat, China is far from being able to politically subordinate or conquer Asia: it is surrounded by wealthy, confident, militarily capable states. The fact that nuclear weapons were invented at the high-water mark of American power in Asia imbues the status quo with a special tenacity. And the weight of the accumulation of China’s chronic economic problems will limit the resources it can devote to geopolitical prize-taking in the long run. All that said, China is and will remain a superpower. The America First sufficiency criterion therefore weighs against attempts to subvert its regime or restore US military primacy in Asia. Those goals are infeasible and pursuing them would risk severe tensions that endanger the American people.

America First should aim to construct a sustainable balance of power in Asia. The vertiginous growth of Chinese military power must be met with an energetic, near and long-term reinforcement of America’s regional security system. The US needs a bigger navy—especially more submarines—and heavy investment in a resilient, denial-oriented network of long-range systems. America First assesses the value of alliances on the basis of whether they contribute more to solving specific American security goals than they incur in cost and risk. Frontline allies underspending on defense or pursuing destabilizing policies will not be considered to be in good standing. In particular, Japan—the keystone of America’s position in Asia—must expand its overdue defense buildup program and take steps to harden its bases. Making the US-China balance sustainable requires modulating the action-reaction dynamic of US-China relations: actions the US takes to secure its position drive countervailing Chinese moves, and vice versa. Conservatives, by their ideological emphasis on good judgement and wariness of unintended consequences, should work toward a structure of reciprocal restraints—including arms control—to stabilize the overlap between America’s sphere of influence and China’s. Peace through strength, yes, but also through prudence.

The US should not stake its Asia policy on the volatile Taiwan question. The current ambiguous US policy towards Taiwan reconciles two interests (in Taiwan’s democratic autonomy and in avoiding general war), the collision of which would conjure a perfect storm for US foreign policy. President Trump is right that the US should maintain this formula for the foreseeable future. Its deterrent features should be enhanced. But putting America First requires admitting that the US interest in avoiding a superpower conflict in Asia greatly outweighs its interest in the fate of Taiwan. In the final analysis, Taiwan is not worth American blood.

The greatest danger for US policy in Asia is that it follows the imperatives of deterrence and emergency thinking into a war over non-vital stakes which deals irreparable damage to our Indo-Pacific security system. Authoritative wargames estimate US engagement in a conflict over Taiwan could lead to the loss of dozens of our warships, hundreds of our aircraft, and thousands of our soldiers. It could lead to strikes on the US itself and it would put severe, possibly fatal, strain on the US-Japan alliance. The US can sustain a tolerable balance of power in Asia without Taiwan, but not without Japan. The loss of that alliance would entail a sudden contraction of our Asian security perimeter, impinging directly on the safety of Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast states. It should not be gambled on the Taiwan question. It follows that cross-strait deterrence measures should be carefully calibrated so as not to raise the risk of crises and conflict. And US policymakers should avoid entangling the US-Japan alliance too deeply in the issue.

A world of geopolitical stalemate requires diplomatic flexibility, not deterrence über alles. The GOP has a proud tradition going back to Theodore Roosevelt of doing deals with geopolitical rivals. America First should continue it. The diffusion of economic and military power away from the US means America’s resort to the sword carries greater direct and indirect costs than it did 20 years ago. But US foreign policy is usually confined to an inflexible mix of deterrence, sanctions, and righteous indignation. The stalemates we face in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and the Western Pacific are rooted in politics. They are also shaded by varying degrees of nuclear risk, which takes military endgames off the table. It is in the interests of the American people to stabilize and attempt to resolve them. The only way to do that is through diplomacy and imaginative reconciliation of national interests. America First aims to restore the US capacity to do deals on first-order questions such as geopolitical alignment, neutrality, and nuclear and conventional arms control. The alternative is a recipe for periodic war scares and crises, each of which is a roll of the dice.

The Bottomline 

America First is a policy of sufficiency over luxury and true national interests over imperial conceit. It is a conservative approach designed to protect the republic in a complex world. US presidents used to pursue these interests as second nature: defend our sovereignty; defend the Monroe Doctrine; avoid foreign wars unless absolutely necessary; manage great power relations with confidence and reciprocity; and expand the frontiers of human achievement. Over the last 80 years we have replaced these with a set of global, imperial interests essentially alien to the real security requirements of the American people. The America First platform should unapologetically make the case for America’s true interests and design US foreign policy to defend them in power. The United States of America exists to protect the natural rights and prosperity of the American people. It is not an institution of international security and it endangers itself by behaving like one.

About the Author

Evan Sankey is a Senior Research Associate and Manager at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.