Frank Meyer and the Roots of Trump’s America First International Coverage

“The overseas coverage of the USA ought to be, inside broad ethical limits, motivated by and anxious with our nationwide curiosity,” Frank Meyer insisted to Henry Kissinger in December 1968.

The letter, one in every of tens of 1000’s of misplaced paperwork present in a warehouse as a part of analysis for The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Lifetime of Frank S. Meyer, illustrates that, even through the Chilly Struggle, right-wingers understood that the Soviet Union solely quickly reoriented the U.S.’s position on the earth. When it ended, so would the energetic U.S. involvement in international locations that the majority People had by no means heard of — a minimum of that was the thought.

Kissinger, nominated by President-elect Richard Nixon to function his Nationwide Safety Advisor shortly earlier than Meyer despatched his letter, sought recommendation from Meyer on what concepts ought to animate America’s dealings with different nations. He had hosted Meyer as a visitor lecturer for his Harvard class a number of years earlier and arranged a gathering between New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Meyer, his constituent most fiercely essential of him. Kissinger and Meyer often known as and corresponded.