The First America First: Joe Kennedy’s Isolationist Crusade

When politicians invoke “America First” today, they echo arguments first championed by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., U.S. ambassador to Britain in 1940. Kennedy believed aiding allies would weaken American strength, entangle the United States in conflicts it could not win, and ultimately threaten the nation’s survival. His defeatism during the Blitz, and his open clashes with Franklin Roosevelt, foreshadowed a struggle that still shapes U.S. strategy: whether America’s security lies in global leadership or in isolationism.

In the fall of 1940, as German bombs fell on London, Kennedy saw only disaster ahead. “The finish may come quickly,” he wrote to his son Joe Jr. “The British, of course, will fight, but only through pride and courage. With the French out of the way and the Germans in control of the ports I can see nothing but slaughter ahead.” Kennedy’s conviction that Britain could not win, and that America should focus on itself rather than come to an ally’s aid, made him an early champion of what was called “America First.”

By late 1940, Kennedy was increasingly isolated from both the Roosevelt administration and the British government because of his unwavering belief in appeasement. Writing to his son Jack, he raged: “The people here keep saying their chin is up and they can’t be beaten, but the people who have had any experience with these bombings don’t like it at all. …What is the war going to prove? And what is it going to do to civilization? The answer to the first question is nothing; and to the second I shudder even to think about it.” As the Battle of Britain began, Kennedy told an aide, “I'll bet you 5 to 1, any sum, that Hitler would be in Buckingham Palace in two weeks.” 

Despite their disagreements, Roosevelt still wanted Kennedy’s endorsement before the 1940 election. Kennedy obliged, delivering a nationally broadcast address assuring Americans that Roosevelt was no warmonger. “Such a charge is false,” he said. “The facts are against our participation in this war.” He supported helping Britain only so long as it kept the United States out of combat and protected American capitalism. 

Roosevelt thanked him for “a grand speech.” Life magazine called the speech “the most effective of the campaign.” But Kennedy’s triumph was brief.

Days later, at Boston’s Ritz Hotel, he spoke off the record with reporters. The Boston Globe published the headline: “Kennedy Says Democracy All Done.” The ambassador had declared that “Democracy is finished in England,” praised Charles Lindbergh as “not so crazy either,” and dismissed Congress as “dopes.” He said, America would “just be holding the bag” if it got involved in the conflict.  

Roosevelt responded forcefully. In his “Arsenal of Democracy” fireside chat, he denounced the futility of negotiating with “a gang of outlaws” and mocked the notion that the United States could remain “a lone island” in a world ruled by force. For Roosevelt, aiding Britain was a moral imperative: to stand aside while democracies collapsed was folly. For Kennedy, such aid was acceptable only as a way to buy time for America to rearm, and the nation, he believed, should remain neutral unless directly attacked.

That clash intensified in early 1941 during the Lend-Lease debate. Testifying before the House Foreign Relations Committee, Kennedy attempted to take an impossible middle ground: supporting Britain in principle while opposing Roosevelt’s authority to act. Pressed by members of Congress to explain how he envisioned oversight of the president, he evaded. Asked whether Lend-Lease risked dictatorship, he sidestepped again. Time concluded he had “filled the room with obfuscation.” Roosevelt’s allies saw a defeatist; America Firsters saw a defector.

By February 1941 Kennedy’s resignation as ambassador was official. The arc felt inevitable: an appointment he coveted; a tenure marked by misreading British resolve and Roosevelt’s intentions; a public unraveling accelerated by his own candor. Bitter, he told the president he did not think it fair to end seven years of government service with a “bad record.”

“If my statements and my position mean that I am to be a social outcast by the administration,” he said, “well so be it.” 

It’s tempting to see Kennedy’s failure as purely personal – ego, ambition, and an outsized faith in his own political instincts. But his arguments sound familiar today: warnings about “foreign entanglements,” distrust of alliances, and the conviction that economic interests can be separated from moral responsibility.

Eighty years later, debates over Ukraine, NATO, and America’s global commitments echo Kennedy’s isolationist logic. Roosevelt’s rebuttal endures as well: that the United States cannot indefinitely prosper in a world organized by authoritarianism; that the tools we send to embattled democracies are not charity but self-defense; and that waiting “until tomorrow” is a choice to act too late.

Joseph P. Kennedy was not fringe voice. He was an ambassador, a would-be presidential contender, and the patriarch of an emerging dynasty. Yet his “America First” logic did not withstand the moral clarity Roosevelt articulated, nor the imperative to fight confirmed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Still, his argument survives because it still tempts us to turn inward, to confuse safety with retreat, and to believe America can stand apart from the world it helped build.