How does the concept of putting your country first speak to your personal values and aspirations?

Putting your country first has some positives and some negatives; we have to fix what's at home before anything else. But there's people across the globe who cannot advocate for themselves. There's been multiple genocides in the last 2 decades. I value the lives of those people, and an ideology that says we cannot back them up just in case it comes across as imperialism or gives us permission to do future imperialism doesn't work, for me.