America's Rise and Fall Among Nations: Lessons in Statecraft from John Quincy Adams

Minding our own business,
while leaving other peoples to mind theirs, was the basis of the United States'
successful foreign policy from 1815 to 1910. Best described in the works of
John Quincy Adams and carried out by his successors throughout the nineteenth century,
this is the foreign policy by which America grew prosperous and in peace. This
policy also remains the commonsense philosophy of most Americans today.

America's Rise and Fall
among Nations contrasts this original "America First" foreign policy with the
principles and results of the following hundred years of "progressive" foreign policy
which suddenly arrived with the election of Woodrow Wilson as president in 1912.
The author explains why the many fruitless American wars--large and small--which followed
Wilson's conduct of World War I always resulted in a failed peace and often
more conflicts abroad and also the loss of the domestic peace each failure
caused among Americans.

Finally, America's Rise and Fall
among Nations examines how John Quincy Adams's insights are applicable to our
current domestic and international environments and exemplify what "America
First" can mean in our time. They chart a clear path to escape America's previous
eleven disastrous decades of so-called "progressive" international relations.