This response endorses the call for international perspectives on American Studies, while it explores some of the potential pitfalls in the way that Professor Kadir formulates this project: the danger of reproducing the nationalist divisions between inside and outside and reifying the international; the problem of restoring a white male canon; and the trap of an exceptionalism paradigm, which criticizes the USA on the grounds of not living up to its own ideals. Reinterpreting some of the examples about the Puritans and William James, the article suggests alternative ways of decentering the USA by locating the migration of people, culture, capital and weapons in the transnational routes of empire and resistance.