Americans and All the Rest examines how the United States has repeatedly defined itself through changing “Others” and how that evolving sense of national identity has shaped its conduct abroad. Rather than treating foreign policy as the product of interests or elite doctrine alone, the book traces the feedback loop between who Americans consider part of “We the People” and how they imagine, oppose, reform, or aid those outside that circle. Moving from the Revolution and the early republic through expansion, empire, world wars, the Cold War, and the uncertain post-1991 landscape, the narrative links domestic inclusion/exclusion (race, citizenship, immigration, religion) to external missions, confrontations, and ideals.

Americans and All the Rest examines how the United States has repeatedly defined itself through changing “Others” and how that evolving sense of national identity has shaped its conduct abroad. Rather than treating foreign policy as the product of interests or elite doctrine alone, the book traces the feedback loop between who Americans consider part of “We the People” and how they imagine, oppose, reform, or aid those outside that circle. Moving from the Revolution and the early republic through expansion, empire, world wars, the Cold War, and the uncertain post-1991 landscape, the narrative links domestic inclusion/exclusion (race, citizenship, immigration, religion) to external missions, confrontations, and ideals.

Americans and All the Rest examines how the United States has repeatedly defined itself through changing “Others” and how that evolving sense of national identity has shaped its conduct abroad. Rather than treating foreign policy as the product of interests or elite doctrine alone, the book traces the feedback loop between who Americans consider part of “We the People” and how they imagine, oppose, reform, or aid those outside that circle. Moving from the Revolution and the early republic through expansion, empire, world wars, the Cold War, and the uncertain post-1991 landscape, the narrative links domestic inclusion/exclusion (race, citizenship, immigration, religion) to external missions, confrontations, and ideals.