Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

U.S. Needs a Smarter Version of ‘America First’

A Q&A with Charles Kupchan on the revival of isolationism.

October 3, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

To put America first, America needs allies.
Photographer: Christian Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images

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Isolationism has had a bad rap for a long time. At least among the foreign-policy elite — aka The Blob — which isn’t having such a great moment in history either. In any case, Donald Trump’s presidency has brought about a radical rethinking of the idea. “America First” isn’t strictly isolationist, nor were Trump’s harangues against U.S. allies and their leaders. The president wants America to play a strong, nay decisive, role in global affairs, just with limited expenditure in diplomacy, dollars and deaths. (And I heartily agree that the U.S. should avoid entanglements with “Nambia.”)

Along came the coronavirus, and for many Americans, the previously abstract concept of a globalized world became all too tangible. Between populism and a pandemic, isolationism has new life.